


Sociopath Studies in Seven Spooky Steps

by Bequeathment_Sperm



Series: Divergence Theory [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But later in the series, Character Study, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gen, Jeff Winger/Eventual Happiness, NOT J/A Endgame, POV Multiple, the 5 timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25546627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bequeathment_Sperm/pseuds/Bequeathment_Sperm
Summary: Timeline 05 Replacing S03E05: While hosting a pre-Halloween pre-party, Britta Perry confides in Troy Barnes that one of their friends may have homicidal tendencies. With Jeff Winger late to the party due to unforeseen circumstances, the night turns out just a little bit different.Each Chapter is told in the POV of a member of the Greendale 7 while they tell their own personalized story.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes/Britta Perry
Series: Divergence Theory [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1849432
Comments: 27
Kudos: 44





	1. Cold Open: Sociopathy Studies

She pours a single-serving size of fruit loops onto a glass bowl as upbeat Jazz music plays in the background. Together with another bowl of lucky charms, some hard taco shells, but no meat, a dollop of dip and a few cut-up pieces of chocolate, they collectively formed a meagre spread of entrees for her pre-Halloween pre-party.

“Dig in guys. There’s dip and everything. And look, a spooky spider,” Britta Perry tries to hype her friends up with false enthusiasm. From the corner of her eye, Shirley shakes her head disapprovingly before attempting to take a preachy-religious high-ground by offering to bring more food in, “ _Oh Brit-tah. Are you sure I can’t add anything to your party? I’d love to help. **Except for pies.** Because I know how you all feel about me pushing them on all of you._”

Britta rolled her eyes; she considered accepting before the older woman’s classic one-two punch line came but of course, she had go there. This was classic Shirley; Sure, she MAY HAVE accidentally broken the pact by eating ONE pie and telling Shirley that they were all trying to boycott _Sorry, human-cott_ her baking obsession, but being called a ‘Godless Hippie Skank’ was going too far, especially coming from a self-proclaimed ‘Good Christian’. Before things escalated any further, Pierce thankfully chimed in, claiming not to get the concept of having pre-parties and suspecting that this was something ‘young people’ just made up. 

“It’s a Pre-party! It’s informal, intimate and just for us.” Britta replies to him, thankful to receive an out from her previous conversation before turning to the new roommates, “And I told you guys, you didn’t have to dress up.”

“Oh, we were hearing this when you called,” Troy replies, wearing some sort of dark-blue long sleeved shirt with silver buttons sewn on.

“Yeah, when we dress up, you’ll know it,” Abed finished the sentiment, sporting a bath robe, a button-down long sleeve shirt and some kind of neck fluff. They then do a wave-into-a-hi-five.

This shouldn’t be how this night was going. Was it just her, or was everyone acting so _weird_ tonight? And where was Jeff? _It’s just your nerves, Britta. This is fine. I’ll just get to the bottom of this and it will all be fine._

“Britta, there’s nothing in your playlist but Spooky Party, the Beetlejuice soundtrack and NPR podcasts,” Annie comments. _Have they said Beetlejuice thrice recently?_ She couldn’t remember. In the background, Britta notices a man in a Beetlejuice outfit walk by as if he was summoned. _I hope Abed saw that._ She snaps out of her thought process to barely catch Abed nodding towards the outside of SRF with a smile. Britta then claps her hands together as she tries to answer Annie with upbeat enthusiasm, “We can listen to one of those! I have Michele Norris interviewing Errol Morris. Don’t worry, they address it.”

“Where’s Jeffery?” Shirley inquires towards everyone else but her, Britta notes bitterly. The woman was clearly turning Britta into a Pariah for the groups collective decisisionmaking last week and it was downright injustice that one person be punished for the deeds of everyone. It all stemmed from the lady's unreasonable hate for weed and her thinking Britta was addicted to it. Which was totally wrong, she said to herself. _Didn't even touch one today. Not an addict._ As her face sours up to Shirley's dismissal, Abed replies, "Oh, he'll be late."

“What he said was…” Abed continues before changing his body posture entirely and channels his inner Jeff, “Sorry I’ll be late. I’ve got to make some polite appearances tonight before coming over. If it ends before I get there, I'll catch you all at the party.”

Annie audibly scoffs from her chair. “Typical Jeff. But… How’d you find out about that, Abed? We haven’t heard from Jeff ever since…”

Annie trails off. Britta distinctly remembers that she and Shirley weren’t the only people who seemed to encounter some tension after Abed had left to get the pizza. _Did something happen between those two?_ I’ll find out later. 

“Oh, I texted him yesterday to thank him for the $20 he gave me for the pizza. Because of him, I found a Nickel in the hallway. I really hope this is the real timeline. Also, don’t worry, Annie. I reminded him to bring you your sweater.”

Annie shifted in her seat, visually uncomfortable. _Okay I DEFINITELY need to find out what happened there. But I need to get to the bottom of these test results NOW._ Britta looks around the room for someone to pull over for help.

Troy? _It'll be hard at first, but I think he'll be able to pull through assuming he can keep it together._  
Annie? _Normally, yes. But right now, she seems to be pretty busy with her own problems._  
Abed? _Likely, but he’ll end up turning this into a bit._  
Shirley? _Not with the stinky-eye and snark she's been throwing me all night._  
Pierce? _Nope. Never._

While Annie and Abed discuss Wingers tardiness, she quickly makes her way towards Troy, “Hey, can I have a quick conversation with you?”

“Sure Britta, whatsup?” he smiles innocently at her, but stays firmly planted beside Abed. She tries to subtly tilt her head out of the room so they could head outside. “Oh, you mean in private. Alright hold on.”

“Abed, I’ll be right back,” he tells his best friend before joining Britta outside.

\---

“Remember last week when I made you guys fill out those anonymous personality tests for my psyche class?” Britta asks Troy.

“Yeah…” She visibly notices him drift off into his thoughts, “Wait, did Abed turn out to be the Logician like he thought? I hope I get the entertainer. That would be so dope.”

“No, not that kind of test. I didn’t run Myers Briggs… I did… Something else,” She confides in him, unable to hide her obvious distress. He inches back for a second, but then moves back in, empathetically and concerned, “Britta, what did you do?”

She doesn’t answer at first. The words are hard to say. Partially because she doesn’t want them to be true, but also because she felt like she should’ve been upfront with the tests from the beginning. She feels like she’s spiraling. Maybe bringing this up was a bad idea. But before panic digs in any deeper, he breaks the silence, “Britta, come on, you can tell me. It’s alright; It’s us. You can talk to me. Safe space.”

“I… I may have run a personality test to check for homicidal tendencies… And one of our friends is… deeply disturbed.” she admits to him. Suddenly, the sound of lightning strikes and the lights flicker. Troy screams and instinctively grabs hold of her. Unconsciously, she holds him back. But suddenly, from the corner of her eye, a witch creeps up behind them.

“Trick or dean!” Dean Pelton shouts out. They break away from their impromptu hug as he casually looks right over them, towards the rest of the study group before finishing his train of thought. “Don’t forget to come by our Halloween Scare-tacular dance. By the way, where’s Jeffery?”

“Running late.” Britta says to him. _Classic Winger_. The dean brushes it aside before continues his spiel, “Oh okay. Don’t tell him that I came in; I'll be back later to see his reaction au naturale.”

“Anyhoo, I rigged the lights to flicker since it’s Haloween,“ Craig explains to them, fanning his hands out as if it was a surprise. Not that any of them even asked.

“That’s cool. I wish it were like this all the time,” Troy humors him, she assumes. Or maybe not. Sometimes, she can’t be too sure.

“What a Wonderful suggestion, Troy. Request GRANTED!” Pelton enthusiastically says. _That response came in far too quickly._ He then covers his mouth and whispers the rest of his sentence, “No takebacks.”

“Next Month’s theme will be… All Saints day month!” Dean pronounces as he walks away from them as the lightning-flicker triggers again.

“Anyway… ” She tries to bring back the original conversation. “Look here… One of the tests came back with 70 out of 75 red flags for an extreme personality disorder. EXTREME, Troy.”

Troy shrugs off her concerns. “What’re you so worried about? Look, we all KNOW Pierce is crazy. That old white dude flips from cool to creepy way too often to be normal.”

They both glance back at the study room to see Pierce Hawthorne leaning against the glass, spreading apart the shutters, holding a gift-wrapped package and staring at Troy. The old white man panics, likely because he was caught, shuts the blinds and walks away nonchalantly, pretending nothing had happened.

“See? I told you. Creepy. He’s been trying to give that to me all night. I swear, if that’s another Troll doll, Britta, we’re having another vote to kick him out. Seriously, though. If we have a legit crazy person? It’s definitely Pierce,” Troy confirmed.

“That’s what I thought at first too but there were FIVE questions that were unflagged.” Britta explained. “And all FIVE unflagged questions were tied to Racism.”

“Not Pierce then,” Troy agreed with a nod. “Wait… So then that means…”

They both stare back into Study Room F as Annie, Shirley, Pierce and Abed dance to Spooky Party music within. The lights flicker once more as lightning sounds again from the outside.

Fear spreads throughout Troy’s face. She knows that he’s scared. Did she bring in the wrong person to help her find out who it was? Troy continues to panic, skittering around uncomfortably, “Britta, why’d you bring me into this? Why?!?”

She was beginning to regret her decision. Maybe she should’ve asked Annie. Or Abed. Maybe even Shirley. For a moment, Britta Perry froze. _Am I that terrible at judging character? Are my therapizing skills so bad that I can’t pick out someone who to help me deal with this like this? Should I change her major one more time?_ Outside of her head, Troy continued his concerns, “You know how hard it is for me to keep this a secret! I don’t want to mess this up for you! How will we find out, Britta? How!?!”

And with one word, Troy pulled her out of it. _We. We can get to the bottom of this._ She smiled at him, placed his hand on his shoulder and exclaimed “Troy, come on, we’ll be fine. It’s alright; it’s us. We can do this.”


	2. Britta: Kettle Corn Killer

Britta Perry reenters the room with him trailing closely behind. She notes that he’s still visibly sweating, sporting the same look in his eyes from when he first met LaVar Burton. It did seem, however, like Troy Barnes was keeping himself at ease by softly humming the tune of Michael Haggins’ ‘Daybreak’.

"Troy, are you sure you want to do this?" she asks, taking a moment to make sure he's all in. He nods and pats her once on the shoulder before standing beside her, still uneasy but willing, "Let's do it. We got this, Britta. "

They smile at each other before she turns back around and buzzkills the group's impromptu dance, missing the irony of her statement entirely. “Alright, let’s get this pre-party started!”

“Sounds good. Troy wanted to go to the dance before they ran out of food.” Abed tells everyone as he points directly at his friend. Britta notices that he must’ve picked up on his roommate's initial distress and wanted to somehow bring him back to a state of normalcy by giving him something to be excited for. The attempt works to snap Troy back even further to his regular state before he enthusiastically replies, “Ye… Yeah! The dean said he got free TACO meat from the Army.”

“Didn’t we already have taco meat last year? Why the hell does this school keep giving us Latino Thai food?” Pierce Hawthorne chimes in without thinking. He takes one glance towards Troy, who looks at him disapprovingly. He then corrects himself, “Good stuff, though… Although the day after, I couldn’t get the taste of hippie out of my mouth.”

“ _Perhaps someone just did something to the meat, Pierce. We all know a lot of **GOOD** people did questionable things that night and it was entirely out of their control. **Maybe some**_ **drug addicts _put something in there…_** _We better be careful this year._ ” Shirley finishes bitterly. Britta doesn’t have time for this argument about drugs right now. Although entirely uncalled for, Shirley was very right about that one. She ended up sleeping with **CHANG** and nobody would’ve likely have done that without some kind of … additive. _Avoid the Taco meat this year and don’t take anything from Starburns._ After making that mental note, she then quickly reverts the conversation back to the original topic, “Yeah, we can go to the dance in a bit. But first, why don’t we tell some scary stories?”

“Yeah, come on guys,” Troy says with a smile-too-big-to-be-real, as he pats Abed on the shoulder and motions towards the couch. Troy takes a seat on the end of one of the couches, and oddly enough, Abed opens up a spot for Britta in the middle. She sits in between them with slight confusion before deciding that Abed likely did it to give her the lead for the conversation. Annie, Shirley and Pierce take the other couch, leaving a solo empty seat at the ‘head’ of the circle subconsciously for Jeff Winger.

“I’ll start with a story about a horrible fate befalling innocent people, and then I’m curious to get individual reactions.” She looks at Troy, subtly winks at him, then at Abed who raises his eyebrows in confirmation, before giving a nod to the rest of the group.

Pierce rolls his eyes.  
Annie politely looks at her expectantly.  
Shirley seems to be hesitant to do this at best.

So she begins in a rush, hoping to keep everyone in place before they decide to do sidetrack, “Once upon a time, there was a couple and a car in the woods making out, or something.”

\---

An old car in the the woods is parked recklessly in middle of a clearing. The outside is pitch-black, and the area is eerily silent. Within, a hot blonde and her slightly childish, but not at all immature partner are kissing in the back seat; a subtle scent of cannabis fills the car as they go at it. Suddenly, a loud ‘pop’ happens, startling her.

“I think I heard something,” the intelligent and capable therapist lady exclaims to her dark-skinned partner in a “T” letterman jacket. Another ‘pop’ occurs, unsettling her even more.

“Oh, that’s just my kettle corn; it’s our after-fun-time snack,” He replies, pointing towards the front of the passenger’s seat. She shrugs and pulls him in for another kiss. But as things begin to get heated once again, the car radio chimes in out of the blue, “In the news tonight, top story: An escaped convict from the asylum has escaped and he’s mental and he’s on the loose and stuff.”

“Oh my god, that sounds dangerous,” the strong-willed woman exclaims, pausing their make-out session as she takes in a puff to calm her nerves as she listens to the announcement.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s no biggie. We’ll be fine. This isn’t a horror movie so the pretty girls and black dudes NEVER die first,” He replies to her with a charming smile, before he attempts to kiss her again, the sound of the kettle corns ‘popping’ escalating in frequency. The radio announcer continued, “He was last seen in the woods carrying a wooden thingie. A wooden plank that looks like a baseball bat but is used to paddle stuff instead. You know what I mean.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Britta-but-not-Britta confirmed, to Troy-but-not-Troy. He nods back at her, “Fine, I’ll get out and look. But when I get back, we’re having that kettle corn.”

Despite seeing fear in his eyes, he goes anyway. For her. But as he turns around, a masked man appears, standing right in front of him, wielding a kettle-corn paddle and begins to bludgeon her slightly-more-than-platonic companion to death. He screams out to her, “Ouch! Help! I’m getting hit by his flat-bat-thing!”

“Oh my god no! I was right!” she screams as the sound of wood on flesh seems to inconspicuously time itself with the ‘pop’s of his kettle corn.

\---

“And the woman was screaming and screaming and the man got killed, the end,” Britta concludes her story before turning over to her co-host, “Troy, how does that make you feel?”

“Hungry,” he replies to her with a confused look on his face. She returns it back to him, “That’s an odd reaction.”

Everyone else mumbles under their breaths in disagreement. Troy clarifies his original statement, “You talked about Kettle Corn, Britta. Of course, I’m hungry.”

“Crap. I knew I should’ve brought different snacks.” Britta exclaims. _Crap. I shouldn’t have said that out loud. Get it together, Britta. You’re not even high right now. Focus._ Shirley scoffs at Britta and reaches into her bag to pull out some chips before offering it to Troy, “ _Troy, would you like some Splingles?_ I usually bring a bag for emergencies in case my boys go hungry, but it seems like you might need some right now.”

“Nah, Shirley, thank you, but it’s alright,” he replies to her. _Weird. I wonder why he doesn’t like Splingles. It’s the fit chip._ Pierce interjects, trying to insert himself into the conversation, likely trying to win back some of Troy’s friendship due to the Troll incident during the Pizza visit, “Troy hates Splingles, Shirley. He talked about it all the time when he was living with me. Britta, why don’t we have Kettle Corn? Come to think of it, where is that Mr. Kettle Corn anyway?”

“Yeah, whatever happened to that guy? I miss him… ” Troy replies to Pierce without making eye contact.

“Oh, he left Greendale about half a year ago when Jeff convinced the Dean to give him his home address. Apparently, he went over to his house that night. I think that was around the time when we were deciding to let him or Chang into the group and Annie asked Rich out,” Abed explained. Britta turned her head to Annie who seemed to give a shocked look before she shrank in her seat and was clearly getting increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. _I guess she didn't get to hear about **THAT** story._

“We’re going off-topic; ABED?” Britta exclaimed.

“Yep” he replied quickly, likely picking up Britta’s social queue to pivot, “How did that story make you feel?”

“Embarrassed,” the reply came quickly.

“That’s ANOTHER odd reaction.” Britta therapized, only to be met once again with another chorus of disapproval.

“Seems fair,” Troy mentions, as Britta swats the other comments away as she continued her line of questioning, “What embarrassed you about it?”

“I didn’t care about the characters,” Abed stated plainly, without any malice whatsoever. She stares at him warily, wondering if it was him that got flagged. _Abed’s done some odd, questionable things in the past. But most of it comes from wanting to do bits and saying what he means without holding back. Sure, he doesn’t censor himself, but that’s because… Well, because he was Abed. He didn’t really lack empathy, did he?_

“Didn’t care about them?” Britta presses him, but feels a slight nudge on her leg from Troy. She turns to face him shaking his head in disagreement, who is clearly trying to signal to her to hear Abed out fully before falling into judgement. She turns back towards her movie-obsessed friend, “Go on…”

“They were stupid. They deliberately put themselves in danger, and when they warned about it, the guy got out of the car.” Abed explains to the group. She continues her line of questioning, “Do you believe because he was stupid, he deserved to die?”

“What the hell kind of party is this?” Pierce shouts out. The rest of the group ignore him somewhat, while waiting on Abed’s answer. 

“I suppose from a creative standpoint, some characters deserve to die. Ones that lack common sense or basic survival instinct.” He states, “Your story’s not scary because the characters are making choices the audience wouldn’t make.”

“Plus you need a...” Abed trails off, “A different lead.”

 _Did he mean to say smarter?_ The pause likely came from him choosing the words carefully since the lead was clearly Troy. _Wait, why did I use Troy?_ As Britta Perry pondered on the implications of her decision-making, Abed Nadir began laying out the structure for his spooky story of the night.


	3. Abed: Hollywood likes Brunettes now

“It’s a dark, cold night in the woods. We establish a traditional log cabin, then cut to,” Abed Nadir transitions immediately into character introductions after a quick scene definition. He rapidly goes over his friend-audience, in an attempt to create an optimal Horror trope pairing that wouldn’t perish nearly as quickly as Britta’s choice of actors who were clearly stand-ins for Troy and Britta herself. _No offense, Troy._

Basing his companion off of Annie was clearly the logical choice, he told himself. Sure, pairing with someone like Britta would have been the safer option; she was progressive, likely not to think too much about the decision, and was hosting the pre-party so she was clearly already invested. But something about the way Britta and Troy acted when they reentered the room together stuck out to him. Was there a shift in the group’s dynamic already, he wondered. Abed hadn’t simulated something like this happening until sometime around mid-April of next year. _Uh-oh. Is this an alternate timeline? Should I have caught that die during our housewarming a couple days ago? I wonder if Prime-Timeline-Me found that nickel in the hallway._

The corner of his eye twitches thrice before proceeding with his thought process. Shirley was back with her ex-husband and would’ve taken pairing with anyone else as an insult to her religious character. Matching up with Pierce would have been a one-way ticket to dying in the story so fast, that the audience wouldn’t have time to make an emotional connection. And Jeff wasn’t here. _Good movies aren’t conservative. I shouldn’t choose Britta; besides, the blonde heroine trope has been overplayed recently and Hollywood seems to be pivoting to Brunettes now._

\---

“Here we are, a log cabin I rented so we could be intimate in safety because it’s not the 50’s, so we don’t have to park a car and neck at Inspiration point,” the half Polish, half Indian/Arabic (he couldn’t decide yet. Maybe both) lead said to his companion as they entered the cabin together.

“That makes sense. But could you tell me again why you choose a place so close to an antiquated insane asylum?” she questions as she goes about the house, inspecting its current state.

“And I’m comforted by your… wait, what?”

\---

Abed pauses his tale, a bit perplexed. _This was supposed to be the part where she’d say that she was turned on by how logical he was, and then they’d kiss. A Britta stand-in wouldn’t have been nearly this observant. Did changing the character base alter the story entirely?_ Regardless, he pressed on.

\---

“It’s a nice cabin, though. Very cozy.” The shorter girl complimented him on his decision-making skills as she moved to take a seat on the couch by the fire, and invites him to follow. He slips in next to her on the couch and cups her chin, while staring deeply into her eyes.

“Hrmn… you like it warm?” he asks, leaning in closer, “How about we turn that heat up a bit more?”

She nods shyly and giggles from underneath him as their lips meet. He breaks away to make commentary, “Enjoyable. Soft lips. Just the right level of moisture.”

After a brief pause, the lead goes back to kiss her again. After several moments of necking, her face is flushed red and she inquires with shallow breaths, “Are you as fertile as I am tonight?”

He answers plainly, “More.”

She chuckles slightly at his quip before asking the more serious question, “We’re in a place so far away from everything where nobody could possibly hear us but ourselves. Now that we’re alone… I hope you’ve gone and prepared some … precautions.”

\---

_Too much innuendo? Wait, this is supposed to be a horror story. Why am I sidetracking?_

\---

“Always,” he smiles, pulling back from the direction the conversation was going and brings the story back on track by taking out a transistor radio, “We should listen to the news on this radio. I brought it as a cautionary measure, because of the fact that you just mentioned.”

\---

Abed mimics turning on the ratio and begins to hum “Daybreak” for nearly half a minute. He observes his group while this is all going on:

Troy hums along, dancing to the beat with his eyes closed.  
Shirley makes a motion to wrap it up.  
Annie seemed to be enthused; likely from being able to empathize with one of the leads.  
Everyone else eyes him curiously before Pierce Hawthorne breaks the melody, “Abed! Why are you doing the whole song?”

Abed looks at him quizzically. _Pierce seems to be more on-edge today compared to the past couple weeks; possibly from his argument with Troy about the Norwegian Troll._ He understood why. The old white man was both hurt and angry that Troy left. Abed couldn’t fault him for how he felt. Troy was a good friend and in the past week, he realized that living with him was great. Abed knew what Pierce was going through was hard. Heck, he knew that if the same thing had happened to him, he probably be having a meltdown of Geothermal proportions. _Geothermal? Hrmn, maybe Troy and I should do Hot Lava in the Dreamatorium sometime._ He shrugged off the outburst and replied to him casually, “They wouldn’t turn the radio on at the exact moment of the most pertinent broadcast. It’s too coincidental. But I’ll jump forward in time.”

\---

Suddenly, a loud ‘ _thump_ ’ is heard from outside.

“What was that noise?” she questions him, peering outside but keeping herself fully distance from all possible points of entry. He replies, “Based on the news report we just heard but not just just heard… I assume it’s the deranged paddle-wielding killer who escaped from the transportation truck that was holding him while they were moving him to the aforementioned nearby asylum.”

“I guess they shouldn’t have cut corners and brought more security. When will they ever learn that bringing an escort alongside a prisoner transport could boost public safety, while still being cost-effective,” she contributes; they nod back at each other. 

“Let’s not check that knock out; I’ll call 911 on my cell-phone,” the brunette offers. The male concurs, “And I’ll lock the doors. Then we should stand back to back in the middle of the room holding knives.”

The scene cuts to the pair, backs against each other in the center of the room, holding kitchen knives. But then, Abed Nadir gets interrupted once more.

\---

“I’m sorry… Knives?” Annie interjects, temporarily derailing his story. He pauses for a moment, surprised but curious regarding her outbreak. “I thought you said that these people were meant to have basic survival instincts. They’re both headed to a cabin in the woods alone at night, and they both clearly knew that they were headed to somewhere that could be dangerous.”

“So what are you suggesting?” He asks her, inquisitively. “That the male lead has a hunting knife and a rifle because they went to the woods?”

“Yeah… That and maybe the girl has a gun of her own…” Annie suggests before trailing off to finish the rest of her sentence in a whisper. “Like maybe a .38 Special? Compact, light, and easily concealable in her brown mesh purse?”

Abed’s eyes widen. _Wait, why is that so specific? Unless…_ In unison, everyone but Pierce stares at Annie’s suspiciously similar purse then the room draws silent. _Personal experience._ Before anyone can comment, Annie chimes back in to explain her line of reasoning, “Like you said, it’s not the 1950’s anymore. Some girls carry guns to protect themselves too.”

“That’s not a gun. That’s a girls peashooter,” Pierce scoffs, before pitching his own option while making a cupping motion with both his hands, “Give that girl a **MASSIVE** double-barrelled...”

“No,” Abed sharply shuts him down without even passing him a glance. He takes a moment to see Annie, before reading the rest of the room: Shirley and Britta seem to be agreeing with her. Abed decides to not dig deeper; not yet at least. A flashback of that one night that they went out for drinks on Troy’s birthday hits him. _We did drop her off in a really bad neighborhood. Come to think of it, wasn’t the ground floor a sex-shop?_ He makes a note to ask her about her living situation later. Also, the guy that night was wrong; Stargate was not better. Abed returns to the scene quickly, tweaking the status quo to accommodate the completely logical edits.

**\---**

The scene cuts back to the pair, backs against each other in the center of the room. He’s holding a hunting Knife and has a Hunting Rifle strapped to his back. She’s got her trusty .38 Special, waiting for the killer to dare break in.

The fireplace cackles in the background. Tension fills the air as ominous silence looms. And then, from the sole entrance out of view from them both, they hear glass shatter. That’s when he enters their field of view; the escaped killer.

\---

“And then he kills them both. The end,” Pierce Hawthorne cries out definitively. _Okay, Pierce is definitely not a fan. That or he’s mad at me. Maybe because he thinks I’m the reason Troy moved out? No, that can't be right; Troy asked me to move in with him._ Abed turns to him sharply, “Again. No.”

“Well, why the hell not? You used her dumb idea.” Pierce exclaims, pointing towards Annie accusingly.

“Because her idea made sense; your ideas are stupid,” Abed replies without missing a beat, once again ignoring the old man’s scowl; he catches her trying to hide a smile.

“He enters their field of view and, after seeing them both wielding superior weaponry, he flees. Because although this is a Horror story, he’s still human, this is America and he just broke into their property,” Abed concludes. Pierce frowns back at him angrily, “Do these people ever die? You’ve been going on for 10 minutes.”

Abed pauses for a moment, analyzes the plot laid out by the story so far and finally meets Hawthorne’s gaze.

“Probably not. Between the badass woman’s level of intelligence, her likely skill with firearms, and the male’s overall level of doomsday preparedness, the killer would likely murder a few incoming 911 cops before fleeing and coming back later during the sequel, meaning these two make it to the end,” he concludes. From the corner of his eye, he spots the tension in Annie Edison's shoulders ease up as she breathes a sigh of relief.

“I thought you were gonna show us how it was done. With the emotional connections, earnable deaths and whatnot,” Shirley asks him, slightly agitated. 

“I had to pivot in the end due to new information. I was initially going for a pair of lovable yet vulnerable people but in the end, one of the characters had more layers than I thought,” he explained defending himself. For a split-second, his eyes met Annie’s. They share a smile. _Yep. Definitely the right call to choose Annie._ Then he carries on with his reasoning, “Although in hindsight, if I wanted to have an emotional, but quick death, I shouldn’t have used a pair of 20-something year olds. I should’ve just used the slightly racist but wise and charming wise 70-plus year-old White Man archetype.”

His friends all turn towards Pierce Hawthorne who’s sitting right in front of him. The dried-up heir to a moist towelette empire seems to be confused as the rest of the group throw words of questioning his way.

“Charming?”  
“Wise?”  
“Only SLIGHTLY Racist?”  
After the last side-comment, he picks up, “Wait. What? He… He’s not talking about me. I’m 66, Dicks,”

“Guys, I wasn’t talking about Pierce. One person, usually confused and not central to the plot or the main cast has to die early on to establish the villain as a credible threat. It’s a classic movie trope,” Abed explains to everyone. The comment, however, seems to strike a nerve closer to home in an already-sensitive Pierce, rather than calm him down, “What do you mean dies early and isn’t central to the cast?!?”

 _Uh-oh. This misunderstanding is likely going to bite me in the butt._ Before he can reply, Pierce continues his tirade, getting up from his seat to lean forwards to get into Abed Nadir’s face, “You know what, I’m so sick of you and your movie crap. Put me into your story and I’ll win.”

“And Nobody help him! I’ll destroy him just like I did in Dungeons and Dragons,” Pierce declares, pointing accusatory fingers at everyone else in the group. Abed knew that letting this play out is likely a bad idea. Pierce was clearly descending to DND-levels of Dickish again. There was a reason why nobody talked about their Advanced Dungeons and Dragons session anymore; nobody wanted Pierce to become that kind of person again. That plus that Drow-face thing was pretty bad. Maybe. He couldn’t tell.

At this point, though, there was just no going back. Pierce Hawthorne was clearly reeling from losing Troy as a roommate and channeling that hurt into anger at Abed. If Pierce wanted to fight it out through roleplay to get out of his system, so be it, “Okay then… A sixty-six year old white man named..?”

“Pierce Hawthorne,”  
Abed sighs, “Pierce Hawthorne enters a log cabin alone. Does he have a backstory? What’s he like?”  
“No backstory. He’s a barrel-chested stud.”  
“And what do you do?”  
“I wait until he comes into the room. Then I attack him,”  
“With what?”  
“I don’t know, dummy. My fists.”

“Like Kick-Puncher! That’s so dope. I wish I had my fists had the power of kicks,” Troy exclaims before trailing off to stare at his hands.

“As the killer closes in, Pierce Hawthorne flails his arms around in vain as the convict’s paddle slams into his chest, outranging the reach of his fists by a full two feet. Before you can recover, he caves in your skull. Dead.”  
Pierce’s nostrils flare up, “Fine then. I kick him.”  
“Pierce Hawthorne attempts to kick the murderer, but the killer is much more agile and dodges the incoming strike. Before you can try again, he caves in your skull. Dead.”

“Abed, I think you might be going too far, here. I think we’re sidetracking.” Britta interjects, likely trying to refocus the night towards what he figured would be her actual motive; some kind of Psyche analysis and not at all a story-night between friends. Abed wanted that too; to pull away, but the old man persisted, “I shoot him then!”

“With what gun?” Annie asks him, accidentally getting in the middle of the building argument. Abed points at her, acknowledging her input.  
“She’s right. You didn’t establish a plausible backstory that would hint that you’d be bringing weapons. He caves in your skull. Dead.”

“Enough!” Pierce Hawthorne screams at him as their mutual friends try to placate his temper. He’s dealt with a vindictive Pierce before. At this point, Abed figures that the best solution would just have him burn himself out.

“You’re done with your little horror story,” Pierce glares at Abed Nadir with what he suspected to be a look based in anger, coated in vindictiveness, mixed in with a slight tinge of pain. Here it was: Pierce the Dick-ish. Grandpa the flatulent. Hawthorne the villain had returned, “My turn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the AlmightyMirage for reading through this chapter before it was published. We've got a Community Community up on discord. Come join us.


	4. Pierce: I am Magnum

This night was turning out to be a disaster. And it was all Ay-beds fault. He had it all planned out and things were supposed to be smooth as silk for The Pierce Hawthorne:

First of all, attend the Britta’s gay, pre-party. _Correction; lesbian pre-party. Booya, good person._ He mentally praised himself for becoming so progressive these past few years.

Secondly, check up on Jeffery regarding the meltdown he suffered at the start of the schoolyear. He attacked their study table with an Axe for Buddha’s sake. Things were clearly looking bleak for Winger. Pierce fretted that this year, it would be Jeff’s turn to be exiled from the group. It happened to Pierce during sophomore year, and, just like he said shortly before Jeff was allowed to reenter Bio 101 because that freak Starburns was kicked out, Jeff and himself were one and the same.

Lastly, talk to Troy about what was clearly a misunderstanding. If memory served, when Pierce let Troy live with him, that Norwegian Troll never left his sight. So much so that Pierce placed it in a spot that his friend could constantly see. When Troy announced to everyone in the group that he was moving in with Ay-bed, of course Pierce’s decision give that to his friend as a parting gift was appropriate.

However, that all changed when he and Troy spoke to each other in private during the housewarming. Troy thanked Pierce for letting him live with him and stated that the reason why he needed to move out was to make it on his own, just like Pierce did. And at that moment, Pierce had a change of heart. The Troll was no longer an appropriate gift to give; Troy deserved something better. A Waterpik. A Jetski. **TWO** Waterpiks. Unfortunately, in an attempt to reclaim the gift, Pierce’s hand slipped and it fell by the wayside.

Troy didn’t seem to appreciate it very much, to his dismay. Maybe because Troy had outgrown the Troll, much like he had outgrown Pierce. And not at all because the Troll used to stare at him in his sleep for the past year. Since the housewarming, Pierce had been trying to make it up to his friend. He never meant to apologize; he did nothing wrong, after all, he told himself. But he simply wanted to be a good friend. That’s what this second gift he had brought this night was meant for.

But the night started off rough. First of all, Britta, pulled Troy out of the room before he could talk to him, probably with the intentions of seducing Troy into becoming her beard. He figured if she would just come out already, things would be so much easier for blonde lesbian. Then things got worse when she started telling those stupid stories. His friends tried to add romance, but they weren’t even hot. Jeff still hadn’t arrived so Pierce could mentor him but worst of all, Ay-bed basically told him that he was not important to the group.

Pierce always thought of Ay-bed was crazy; not a terrorist anymore like he used to, but still crazy. To be honest, he even at times appreciated the Arab’s weird quirks like wanting to shoot documentaries for his bequeathments, despite not getting anything in return. But in times like these, nothing angered Pierce Hawthorne more.

Everyone always catered to Ay-bed and he clearly needed to be taken down a peg. If no one did, he’d just always get his way, walk all over Troy and maybe that boy might try to kick out Pierce again. Or Jeffery. He definitely needed to bring down Ay-bed. For the good of the group. And after doing this, Pierce Hawthorne would be a hero.

\--- 

Funky music played in the background of Magnum’s warm, cozy and totally sexy cottage. Seated on a velvet couch, he held a goblet of fine brandy, confidently swirling the liquid around. Three ladies dressed in incredibly provocative lingerie stand by the bedroom, trying to entice him.

“Come to bed, Magnum,” The sexy, curvy black one calls out to him as the Jewish girl who is clearly his favorite performs a come-hither pose. The blonde who’s likely a lesbian just poses in silence, trying her best to pretend to be straight like the rest of them.

“Just a moment, girls. I’m just enjoying an expensive post-coital brandy,” Magnum replies, not bothering to look at their direction. He smiles towards his companion on the other side of the table, “I’ll be there shortly. I’m just talking to my dearest, closest, but-not-in-a-gay-way, friend here.”

The three seductresses collectively whine, pouting back at him and his friend-turned-roommate as they trudge disappointedly back into the bedroom to wait for him to return. “Carry on, my boy.”

“Like I said, Magnum. Thanks so much for letting me stay with you. You’re the best friend and mentor I could ever ask for,” Roy, the Wonder Boy, beams at him, with all the respect in the world. Magnum nods appreciatively as they both clink glasses before he downs his brandy with a coy smile, “Anytime. I love having you here; stay as long as you like. All I ask… Is that you never leave.”

“Oh, I’d never do that. I love it here,” Roy, dressed already in his pajamas agrees then sets off a long, drawn out yawn. Magnum stands, and offers his hand to his friend to get up, “You should head to bed. Now if you’ll excuse me… I’m going to see some ladies about a birthday spanking.”

Magnum winks towards Roy, before they both perform their classic and totally patented Roy-and-Magnum in the evening handshake. As he motions towards his bedroom to satisfy his lady friends, a punk gangster suddenly busts through his front door, tapping a Glock onto an oversized clock on his chest before pointing it at Roy, “This is a home invasion, you jive mother!”

Roy screams in the background as Magnum courageously steps in the way of the gun’s crosshairs. He responsibly tries to deescalate the threat, “Easy, easy, easy.”

With his arms raised to calm down the intruder, Magnum’s arms and chest unintentionally flex due to his peak physical condition, “Nobody has to get hurt here.”

“Yeah that’s right. Nobody’s gonna get hurt if you just give me your all your expensive brandy and hubcaps.” the thug demands, pointing his gun sideways as he brays loudly in confidence. Abed then focuses his attentions on Roy, “Hey you. You look cool. Why don’t you join me and take this guy for a ride?”

“Hah. You fool. He’d never betray me,” Magnum laughs confidently, but that bravado is quickly shattered as he feels a glass bottle break against the back of his head. The strong, confident leading man drops to the floor, not at all in pain, but in total shock. Before his eyes, he sees Roy slowly warp into a criminal version of himself, sporting a hairstyle consisting of several pulled-up braids and an outfit complete with gun matching Abed’s, “Why would you do this, Roy? I fed you; Gave you satin-silk sleepwear. Took care of you when no one else would. I thought we were friends,”

“Who would want to be friends with a 67-year old white dude. I just hung out here because you were rich and it was easy. Just like all your ex-wives, I’ve got a new homie now and it’s time to peace out,” the newly transformed ex-Roy said confidently, before doing a newly perversified Roy-and-Abed handshake with the home invader.

Magnum’s nostrils flared and his fists clench, before muttering something under his breath. Roy laughs in his face, “I’m sorry, what was that, old man?”

“Maybe he’s already dead,” Abed claims. Roy taps his foot against the side of Magnum’s chest, “Maybe. I guess that sick, sad, twisted old man died alone like I always thought he would.”

Magnum with renewed power in his voice, “I’m alive. And I said I’m 66, dicks”.

In a feat of athletic superiority, Magnum quickly does a kip-up, grabs both guns from his assailants and tosses them far away. The first thug barely gets to express his surprise before Magnum’s fist meets his face. Abed goes down.

“Come on, Roy. It not too late, come back home,” Magnum says to his friend. He can see him slowly changing back to the Roy that was. But from the floor, Abed corrupts him once more, “Nah, dog. It’s too late. You’re with me now.”

With hesitation, Roy attacks Magnum which is easily deflected, “Why would you do this to me, son? I was going to bequeath two Waterpiks to you when I died. Maybe even **THREE**.”

Roy attacks him again. And that’s when Magnum reluctantly strikes back in self-defense, having accepted that the friend he once had was gone. Roy goes down, but Abed gets back up again. Magnum grabs by his metal clock chain and continues with his punches. As each one lands, the blows are accentuated with a word coming from his opponent’s mouth, “You. Are. Still. Relevant.”

“And this is for looking at me like I can’t get erections,” Magnum unzips his pants and gives Abed an uppercut with his penis.

“Oh my god!” Abed exclaimed as his eyes stare down before being finally knocked unconscious. Magnum zips himself back up, wipes his hands, and steps on Abed’s body before heading to the back room to relieve his pain and tension, “Okay ladies, I’m ready for my birthday spanking. Which of you girls knows how to count to 30?”

\---

With that definitive statement, Pierce ends his story, nodding along in a smile. Ay-bed stares at him with the same blank expression that he always considered insane. Surely with that tale, he had gotten his point across. Why Troy had decided to move in with him, he would never understand. Annie and Shirley looked at him in shock, clearly awestruck from how awesome his story had been. Even sour face Britta Perry’s jaw hung open in surprise; likely due to the sexual awakening that she hadn’t expected herself to experience. After a tale as hot as that, she definitely wasn’t a lesbian anymore.

Troy looked at his ex-roommate, in what seemed to be confusion, “What..? That wasn’t even a Ghost story. It was like an episode of some show we’re all too young to have heard of.”

“Fine, then I chop up Ay-bed’s body,” Pierce declared definitively. 

“So that was me. And you were Magnum?”

“Still am, Pakistan. Wanna try me?” 

Ay-bed’s eyes shot open as Pierce Hawthorne noticed the foreigner back away in his seat slightly; clearly, he was winning. From across the couch, Annie states a concern, “Guys, I think these stories are starting to get a bit personal.”

“And so needlessly violent,” Shirley chimes in. Before she can change the subject passive-aggressively, Pierce Hawthorne interrupts her and points at Ay-bed, “He started it,”

“Guys, please. Let’s just all take a deep breath and calm down. We’re starting to go off-track here,” Britta steps in. But by this point, Pierce is too far too deep into this. He was sick of having to pretend like he wasn’t upset at Ay-bed. “This is stupid! Why do I have to calm down after what he said about me? He basically told me I wasn’t important to the group!” 

“You made that inflection on your own. And I don’t know why you’re so upset with me. Troy’s the one that asked me if I wanted to move in with him. You’re just unhappy because you can’t admit to yourself, or to us that you’re lonely,” Ay-bed said emotionlessly as he stared into his eyes.

Pierce Hawthorne was stunned at the very suggestion. He wasn’t lonely. I mean, sure, the mansion felt pretty empty now and he had Troy removed from all the paintings he had commissioned to have made during the past year, but Pierce was not lonely. This had got to be another one of Ay-bed’s mind games. It just had to be. He clenched his fist. I should put that manipulative little prick in his place. Just one punch from Magnum. That’ll show that Kick-puncher fanboy what Pierce Hawthorne is really about. With his jaw clenched and his fist bunched up, he prepared to strike.

Until Troy Barnes stepped in between them both, “Abed! Pierce! Enough! Please, just… Chill for a moment. I’ve got something to say.”


	5. Troy: Say No to No-no Juice

“Totally epic and scary music plays in the background. A dude dressed in a dark-green jumpsuit with a cool-looking flight-helmet walks up to the door of this huge, creepy mansion,” Troy begins his story as two of his previously arguing friends take their seats. _I can’t believe I have to change my legit awesome story with feet-hands, but I promised I’d help Britta. Got to make up stuff, and pull some new twists out of my butt. Heh. Butt._ He pauses for a moment as he nods to himself before continuing, “In his arms, he’s carrying another dude that looks pretty hurt. Dude B enters the mansion; it’s pretty dope, but it’s old and slightly racist-looking and such.”

He sees Annie’s eyes get all crinkled up and confused as she mouths out ‘What’s racist-looking?’ silently towards the rest of the group. Britta subtly jerks her head towards Pierce as Shirley just flat-out points at him; Annie obviously hadn’t seen, or experienced as much Pierce Hawthorne as the rest of the ladies. And none of them had been exposed nearly as much as Troy had; he had seen things. Uncomfortably sexist and-or racist things that he didn’t even know existed. 

_‘You know, Troy. Annie’s my favorite,’_ Troy shuddered, remembering a legit weird Pierce overshare during a random drinking session with his ex-roommate over a bottle of no-no juice. _That night started out weird. And then it got weirder._ In a sweet, but racistly-sexist gesture, Pierce finished his train of thought where Troy least expected, _‘But let me tell you, if you were a girl, or if it wouldn’t make me gay, that title would be yours, my boy.’_

 _Man, that guy is crazy. But he means well, I guess; hope I can fix this. I can’t even think about what he’d do to Abed. Or what Pierce would do to himself._ Troy then snaps his fingers a couple times while showing off a grumpy cat-face to bring them back to focus before he carrying on with Spooky story number four.

\---

“Hello! Is there anyone still here? I need help!” dude B shouts out in the hall. Suddenly, a 65-year-old man steps out from the shadows in the back, looking like he just woke up from a nap. His hair’s in a mess, and he looks dazed and confused, pretty much like all old people over the age of 60 look like past 10pm. Dude B sees him, cracks out a huge smile, and breathes a sigh of relief as he walks up, “Oh thank God you’re still here! I haven’t seen you in like forever! I thought for a second that you died… slightly before your time.”

After taking a second to stare at dude B, the shocked old man scrambles in panic through a storage cabinet and quickly pulls out a shotgun. He then shakily points it at them, and begins shouting out, likely to get his voice recorded on the security cameras, “Intruders! Intruders! They broke in my house! This is self-defense!”

Before he pulls the trigger, dude B calls out to stop him, “Yo! Hold up! It’s me! Butts Carlton! Remember? I used to live here, like… a month ago? Still got the keys.” 

Butts holds out his spare keys to the Mansion which are adorned by a keychain of what appears to be a woman who is basically 80% butt and boobs. The old man pauses, squinting as he stares at the key chain, and back at Butts before laughing out, “Butts? Is that you? Hah. Sorry, I couldn’t really tell. From this far, you all look the same.”

“Yeah…” Butts replies gingerly to the old white man, literally two feet away from him, “Anyway… When I moved out, I became a top-gun fighter pilot: the best of the best. Me and my partner here were shot down; our F-15 went down in the woods.”

“Pew pew pew,” dude A mentions softly in his arms as he makes a finger gun motion. The old coot’s warm smile turns bitter as he stares at the other pilot, “Y… yeah, I thought I heard something awesome out there.” 

“I’m glad you came back home. Is this… your friend? The one you moved in with? Please, come in, for first aids and what have you,” the old man places the shotgun down, pulls out a tray of dark purple liquid and offers it to the two of them.

“Mm, drinks from a stranger. I don’t think I should take that,” dude A mutters weakly. Butts shakes his head, accepting the glass, “Nah, man. It’s cool. We used to drink this stuff **ALL** the time before going to bed; he’s got the **BEST** no-no juice.”

“Well, if you say so,” dude A says before downing the drink. Butts thanks the old man before downing his own.

“Wait. Something’s different. What’s in this no-no juice?” He asks as his body suddenly begins to feel woozy. Butts and his friend then drop unconscious onto the floor as the old white man looms over them both menacingly, “I’ll show you what you get for leaving me! You wanted to be with him instead? Well I’ll fix you!”

\---

“Wakey wakey,” the old dude says as Butts regains his senses. When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees in the hands of the crazy coot’s is a traditional Norwegian Troll. He screams in panic before noticing he’s been strapped down onto a bed beside his friend and covered with an apron, “What… What’s going on?”

“Since you left my home, I’ve made some changes. Your old room is now my lab, where I do weird experiments on people.” The crazy-now-doctor looking old man says as he sets the Troll down on a table that’s directly facing his bed to watch. Butts looks around the room and doesn’t recognize it AT ALL. Except for maybe the paintings on the wall with giant red X’s splayed across what used to be Butt’s face. _Heh. Butt-faces._

“Dude… I’ve been fully moved out for like two weeks,” Butts replies to the old man, confused. Grumpy grandpa grumbles and tries to make a Forrest-Whittaker eye at him, “All it takes is one bad day to reduce a man to lunacy. Now Look!”

Pierce then pulls back the apron back and laughs maniacally as the two Pilots find out that they’re completely attached. Like legit inseparable best friends.

“Noooo!” both A and B collectively shout out, “Forced to be together forever!”

“I sewed you together! I totally sewed you together!” the doctor confirms, pointing at them both as he celebrates the completion of his revenge. Both A and B continue their screams before Butts realizes something unexpected that could be potentially way beyond awesome. He then tries to speak with dude A with his brain, “Abed! Now that we’re sewn together, do we have esp?”

“Yes! We’re psychic now.” Abed replies mentally after he realizes that they both have some sort of magic conjoined-twin powers. Their eyes widen as they both begin speaking to each other using their brain juices, “We can destroy him with mind powers.”

A and B both sit up and focus on the Norwegian troll on the desk across the bed; their eyes glow red as it starts to levitate, before it’s thrown halfway across the room into the crazy old man’s crazy face, “Ow!”

The duo focus their telepathic powers on a knife on the table where the Norwegian Troll used to be, levitate it into the air with a spin, then use it to cut a sandwich for them to eat. As they consume the snack, Abed calls out, “You tried to destroy us.”

“But you only made us,” Butts continues before they both finish the sentence together, “ **MORE AWESOME!** ”

“No! I’m legit jealous,” the old white man laments as the Norwegian Troll slaps him again in the face, disorienting him. The super best friends float themselves next to him and smile in unison, “Now, you are the subject.”

“Wait, what. What are you doing? Tell me more,” A confused boomer stares in horror as parts of his body start moving without his control. Suddenly, his butt pops out from where it used to be, and attaches itself onto his chest.

“No!” he cries out from the sudden change in his body before laughing out in triumph, “Wait. Hah! You fools. By moving my butt to my chest, you’ve given me boobs that I can touch all day.”

“With what?” Abed asks him as the doctor tries and fails to reach for his butt-boobs with his hands, before they suddenly fly off their handles and land onto the spot where his feet used to be. The old man’s eyes widen in fear, finally realizing what had happened, “No!”

Pierce stares at his hand-feet, before moving his feet-hands together to press against his butt-boobs, realizing he physically can’t cup them. His defeated cries echo through the empty mansion, “Nooooo!”

\---

“Nooooo!” Troy vigorously palms at his chest, mimicking the motion that the crazy old racist doctor was trying to do to everyone around him. Shirley, visibly uncomfortable at the degree of sexuality, covers up her chest. Abed smiles as he nods in agreement to his best friend’s story. Britta lets herself have a slight chuckle before making a light cough, signaling to move on with the story. 

“What did I do to deserve that?” Pierce exclaims, getting up from his seat

“Why do think it was you? I said it was a crazy, old racist doctor.” Troy replies to him.

“You literally called him Pierce.”

_I did?_

“Whoops.”

“You know what, I’m out of here. This is stupid!” Pierce declares as he tries to storm off. Britta bars his way, “Hold on, Pierce. I don’t think that’s the end of Troy’s story. I’m sure it gets better. Just hear him out, please?”

_Whoa. Troy story. That’s wrinkling my brain._

“Yeah. Just… Give me a sec, alright?” Troy states before jumping back into it.

\---

“Cool. Cool, cool, cool,” Abed says as he points out each of the flailing old mans misplaced body parts. Butts, however, stares at the struggling Pierce and gets hit with a whole mess of flashbacks from his time living with him:

Taking Butts in when his own dad gave his old room to his 20-year-old girlfriend.  
Drinking no-no Juice out in the parlor.  
Creating a twitter feed blasting all the crazy things that the old white man said.  
More no-no Juice drinking near the pool.  
Pierce helping him haul his Halloween costume to Greendale so he could use it to impress hotties.  
Driving around Pierce’s wheelchair while drinking no-no juice.  
_Man, come to think of it, there was a **LOT** of no-no juice._

As all the memories return, Butts takes a pause before he begins to tear up, **“MY EMOTIONS! MY EMOTIONS!”**

Abed stops due to the ESP link, feeling his best friend’s distress. Butts mentally shares his past experiences with his ex-roommate and tries to let him know that he only acted out because he was lonely. And a little bit crazy, “Okay, maybe we took this one far.”

\---

“And then, dude A and Butts Carlton switch back the old doctor’s hands and feet. All three of them then share a bottle of no-no juice to celebrate their epic new ESP powers and the doctor’s totally awesome butt-boobs. The end,” Troy finishes his story and looks around at Britta and his two friends. Pierce stares back with arms folded, seemingly much less hostile than before. Abed nods agreeingly in silence. Britta smiles supportively, “Go to them, Troy. You’re doing great.”

Troy returns her smile before getting up from his seat and turning towards Pierce Hawthorne, “Look… I know we’ve had our differences. But I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. When my dad kicked me out, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Then you offered to take me in and I didn’t even have to ask. You’ve been so cool, man. Heck, we even tried to kick you out of the group at the end of last school year but you still let me stay. Pierce, Abed may be my best friend, but you’re like my crazy old racist…”

“Friend?” Pierce interjected. Troy shakes his head in disagreement, “Nah. I was gonna say ‘uncle’; You’re more than just a friend to me.”

“More than a **JUST** friend. An uncle,” Pierce mentions, nodding along completely satisfied, likely figuring that the uncle title stacked up higher than ‘Best Friend’ on some kind of made-up relationship chart. _So happy he’s taking it this way._

“I promise I’ll visit at least once a month to catch up. And maybe someday, you can show me what’s in that secret room of yours.”

“I’d appreciate that, Troy. As for the room, maybe when you’re older. I’ve got… secret dogs in there.” Pierce replies.

_Secret Dogs! Man, now I’ve GOT to check out that room. Wait. Focus, Troy._

“I'm sorry I left so quick. I just wanted to grow up faster. You know, become my own man. But for everything you’ve done for me, I just want to say thank you,” Troy finished. Pierce nods and pats him on the shoulder with a smile, “You know what, Troy? I've got something here for you.” 

Pierce Hawthorne walks back to the table, picks up a wrapped gift box and heads back to the group, offering it to Troy, “Happy housewarming. For real, this time.”

“This isn’t that creepy Norwegian Troll’s even creepier sister, is it?” Troy eyes the box suspiciously. Pierce waves the thought off, “Just open the box, dummy.”

He unwraps the box to see a Waterpik.

“Oh. That’s. Cool. I mean, you did promise two of these last week but one’s fine, I guess?” Troy replies, slightly disappointed. Pierce encourages him, “There’s a bit more in there.”

When he lifts out the Waterpik, Troy laughs and jumps up into the sky, elated. “A signed picture of LeVar Burton! Pierce... You’re the best! Thanks, man.”

Troy jumps in and hugs Pierce tightly in appreciation. After a moment, the old man hugs him back, “It’s a pleasure… My boy.”

“Oh, and by the way. In your story. I’m not 65; I’m 66, dick.” Pierce says with a smile as they break the hug. Troy notices that Pierce is now oddly staring off to the side, while still talking to him, “There’s also a $500 Gift Certificate in there for a Drum kit. I know I had that rule about no loud music at my place but, you’ve got your own home now. You make your own rules; stay up as long as you like, and be as **LOUD** as you want to be.”

“Oh man, that is so dope. You remembered my two wishes!” he exclaims, scrambling through the box and discovering the third gift.

“Of course I did, Troy. Again, happy housewarming,” Pierce says, grinning with crazy eyes for some reason, as he stares in the distance. Troy follows his gaze to see Abed’s face frozen in shock.

“ _Oh, that’s nice!_ ” Shirley chimes in as the rest with the exception of Abed cheer on Pierce’s surprising amount of generosity.

Troy then walks over to his better half, who quickly changes his facial expression into that wide-toothed fake smile he practiced for the housewarming greetings, “Abed, thanks for saying yes to getting that apartment with me, buddy. I’m legit looking forward to the 8-hour Dreamatorium sessions and Kickpuncher Marathons.”

“I know I said that living together would be like jumping the Shark when you brought it up at the end of Season 1. But Season 3 seems like the right time; hopefully this won't turn out like Happy Days and it gives us some serious momentum going into next year. I have a good feeling about Season 4,” Abed muses towards him with a nod before doing their best-friend handshake before going in for a hug of their own. Abed whispers to Troy, "Also, please don't get that drum kit."

“Yeah, we'll discuss it. We still need to iron out that Dreamatorium permit,” Troy laughs slightly as they hug it out before heading back to story time.

“You handled that really well, Troy,” says Britta before muttering a silent, “Thank you.”

“I was worried in the middle there for a second. Thanks,” Troy returns her thanks as he takes a seat on the couch beside her. Their arms touch. She leans in; he smiles and does the same. In front of him, Annie beams excitedly, “Okay, you guys wanna hear my scary story?”

“ _Oh, An-nie. I’m sure everyone is excited to hear from you, but could I please go next? After all, I’m sure you all don’t intentionally make me go last every time we do something like this, **right?**_ ” Shirley cuts in, guilt-trippily. Before Annie can say anything, Shirley continues with a polite smile, “ _Thank you, An-nie. Okay, now I would like to tell a story about good versus evil… Once upon a time…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to a No Good B for a Pierce gift idea.


	6. Shirley: She takes them to Church

Heavy death metal music plays on a boombox radio as an Agnostic Welsh man, only slightly younger than the storyteller, opens a bottle of beer before chugging it. Alongside him are an Atheist Swedish blonde, a Jewish Brunette, an Arabic Muslim and a Jehovah’s Witness, who are all participating in an ungodly debauchery party. Also, there’s a Lava Lamp from China labeled “Laser Lotus” to the side somewhere.

“Aw man. My drugs are wearing off,” the Agnostic complains, before looking at the rest of the group for assistance, “Who’s got more?”

“Haha! Here you go, baby,” the Atheist states before she picks up a giant plastic container of what good Christian Women could assume to be Oregano if not for a giant “Weed” label on it. She then poured it all over herself before shaking her breasts  
provocatively to help the devil’s lettuce cascade down her body before slumping down onto the couch.

“All right, all right! That is my kind of pot bong!” The Agnostic man celebrates. From the back, the Jewish lady cheers in support, before turning to the Muslim and Jehovah’s Witness, “Hey guys, I’m starving. You got any more food?”

“Yeah! We got **REAL PIZZA**. Not some of that homemade crap made with ketchup and cream cheese thrown together like a Frankenstein abomination to masquerade as pizza,” the Muslim says as he takes a slice and eats it. The witness of Jehovah replies, “Yeah. And so easy too. 30 minutes or it’s free. Totally unlike having to wait for a bored housewife to arrive at our place at **THREE** and take hours to make **ONE** pizza. This stuff is dope.”

Suddenly, the lights outside flash red and demonic growling is heard from the outside. The party music stops and they all stare at out to the window. With the weed all gone and her clothes all disheveled, the Atheist who lived in New York gets up from her chair, leaving the Agnostic passed out on the couch below, likely from too much tripping.

“Yo Bitters, check it out!” the Jewish girl cries out, pointing toward the window, “Swarms of locusts and tornadoes of frogs.” 

“I don’t care. I lived in New York,” the Atheist states before stepping outside. After a short pause and an ungodly wail from the outside, she walks back to the house covered in blood, much to the panic of everyone else but the downed Agnostic, “Ugh! It’s like New York out there.”

Suddenly, the radio switches from their non-Religious music to bring some much-needed news, ”We interrupt your death metal to bring you some heavy news: All the good Christians got raptured up to heaven, so if you’re hearing this, the good news is, you’re the coolest people in the world.”

“Yes!” they collectively exclaim as the Muslim does a fist pump while the Witness does two. In the background, the radio announcement continues, “The bad news is, the world is over. We’re still in operation because we’re run by heathens. This is NPR.”

“Oh, I love NPR. But man, end of days. Could anything suck harder than this?” the Atheist complains as the door suddenly bursts open and a bald man wielding a pitchfork while dressed in a provocative succubus outfit in high heels and devil horns enters, “Hell-o!”

“Dean-vil here,” the Pansexual imp states as he does a courtesy. “Just popping by with a little damnation orientation.” 

“Here’s the schedge. At 10, you’ll be buried neck-deep then constantly smoked out like a weed. 11:15, severe isolation while watching seeing all your old friends exclude you from their own smaller cliques, followed by Pilates.”

“Oh that’s good,” the Jewish girl nods. The Muslim agrees with her happily, “I like pilates.”

“Yeah,” the Atheist considers before the Dean-vil interjects, “Pilates is the demon that eats your genitals.”

“Ahh!” The brunette screams as the Muslim looks on in confused shock. The Jehovah’s Witness and the Atheist just look generally sad as the Agnostic continues to lay passed out in his own filth. That lava lamp thing is still there in the corner somewhere.

“But first,” Dean-vil says, holding his pitchfork with two hands, “Stabby stabby!” 

Dean-vil then proceeds to stab closely at the community of friends as they try to distance themselves from him. In the process, he nicks the Lava Lamp which starts hissing on the table before it falls onto the floor, breaking entirely, “Ha ha ha! For whom do ye cry out? All the good people are gone!”

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an Angel materializes; the Dean-vil screams in agony from her righteous light. The Jewish girl exclaims in excitement, “Whoa, look! It’s our friend we used to pick on and exclude for being Christian! Wow, she looks great!”

The angel then turns to the Dean-vil before blowing him back towards the house entrance, “Aah! A righteous wind blows! Off to Pilates!”

However, as the Dean-vil crosses the center of the room, he manages to drag out the passed-out Agnostic Man with him before the door shuts closed behind them both, “I’ll be back!”

“Thank you for saving us, Shirley!” the Blonde Atheist says before correcting herself, “I mean, your name’s not Shirley. This is a story about strangers. Anyhoo, can you take us to heaven now, please?”

The remaining friends all make a pleading motion towards her. The angel women shakes her head sadly, “ _Ooh, I cannot I just came to say goodbye on my way to Abraham’s bosom. That’s where all the Christians are._ ”

“What about me? I’m half Christian!” the Jewish girl with a Presbyterian father exclaimed to her. Shirley shakes her head to that too as she starts to fade away, “ _I’m sorry, but no. I tried. If only you let me baptize youuuuu…_ ”

“ _Goodbye. I forgive youuuuu…_ ” The remaining friends stare at her in shock and regret for all their actions as she gets transported to heaven. Then, as soon as the angelic afterglow dissipates, the door breaks open once again. This time, however, the Dean-vil, now dressed in a bridal gown is joined by a Wing _ **-er-**_ ed Demon in a black tux that looks almost identical to their former Agnostic friend. With twin chainsaws to match their newly minted wedding bands, they approach the four, screaming out their communal battle cry, “Gay Marriage!”

\---

“ ** _And they chainsaw-ed them to bits!_** ” Shirley loudly exclaimed, sporting a smile on her face, before changing her tone, “ _Then they put them back together._ ”

“ ** _Then they chain-sawwed them again._ Forever.**” She finished strong with her fist raised. The study group, however, seemed less enthusiastic, or at the very least, confused. After a short pause, Troy spoke first, “Shirley, that wasn’t a horror story. That was a sermon.”

Britta bitterly scowled at her before jumping into the conversation a little too quickly for it to be considered organic, “Yeah… Shirley, that story was so… undeniably focused on society being **ADDICTED** to Sex and Drugs. Could there possibly be another meaning to it? And that rapture part; would you say that ALL non-Christians, despite being ‘good’ by your definitions **DESERVE** to be punished?”

“Britta, I am **NOT** going to defend myself for telling a story,” Shirley squints back at her as she shakes her head, “And besides, why am I the ONLY one being questioned here? I mean come on.”

“Butt-boobs?” She points accusingly at Troy as he smiles, likely entering his own mind to replay the boob scene all over again.

“Objectifying women **AND** Racism?” She goes on to talk about Pierce, although that one was probably low-hanging fruit and everyone but the old man likely agreed with her here.

“And humming a **DAMNED** instrumental song nobody’s ever heard of for over half a minute, then killing Pierce off three times in the same amount of time? – _Although I did enjoy that last part. Thank you, Abed,_ ” She thanks him, much to the chagrin of Pierce Hawthorne.

“Pew,” Abed replies back to her, before going off on one of his little side-rants, “Oh, and by the way, that was Michael Haggin’s ‘Daybreak’. I don’t really know how you could miss that. We’ve mentioned it at least a couple times tonight.”

“Mhmm… As I was saying,” Shirley cuts him off before she continues her monologue, “At least **MINE** had a lesson. I’m also the **ONLY** one who brought in everyone else from the group; all the rest of you went off into your little side-pairings and partners. And don’t you all pretend it didn’t happen, I saw you all making googly eyes at each other while you were telling those stories.”

“Googly eyes?” her friends all collectively said before they started staring at each other.

 _Britta and Troy. I swear to God, if Britta gets this boy on the weed, I’m going to have to stop holding myself back on this hippie situation.  
Annie and Abed? That’s new. This better not be another one of those bits of his. Well, at least the boys have moved on from...  
Troy and Abed. Lord, I spoke too soon. Well, I guess some things never change._  
Shirley feels a cold chill run down her spine as she catches Pierce Hawthorne looking at her.

“Don’t worry, Shirley. I included everyone else in my story too. And nobody else makes googly eyes at me either; we’re the same.” He explains. _Wait? I was one of those three floozies?_ Shirley mentally marks him as spam before moving on, “And you, you’re one to talk, Britta; or did you forget that your story **ALSO** had sex and drugs? I see what you’re trying to do here; trying to psychoanalyze me.”

She completely understood what Britta was trying to do from the start. Her earlier quip about getting ‘individual’ reactions after telling stories made it obvious; this was an assignment for her next flash-in-the-pan Psych major. It was only a matter of time before this, like every other decision Britta had made since she’d known her, would be discarded when things got too chaotic. Shirley figured it would be better to push and put an end to this now while her friend still had time to switch classes for the semester.

“Look, I tried to be the better person today by showing you that you can support your friends even if you don’t agree with what they do by showing up to this pre-party party nonsense.”

“ **EXCUSE ME?** Better person? Shirley, I…” Britta tried to interject, but at this point, Shirley was on a roll.

“And that goes for all of you too. I’ve gone to: Football Rallies, Debate contests, a **DAMNED STD** fair, Dance recitals, All 5 School Dances, that _SILLY_ pen lockdown, Abed’s Clay Christmas thing, that Drug play where I was a Crayon, Pierce’s Bequeathings, Abed’s Birthday dressup; **EVERYTHING** you all wanted to do. And I did all that while taking care of 3 kids and maintaining the highest GPA in this whole group,” Shirley declared. Annie looked at her, wide-eyed and mouth agape, “What?”

“ _Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you owned the patent to being smart. **Was I supposed to announce that to the whole damn world?**_ ” Shirley retorted back at Annie before finishing her earlier statement with a sad undertone before Annie had the opportunity to dig further, “So after all the things I’ve done, was supporting my baking too much to ask?”

The room was dead silent; either due to everyone being rendered speechless from an extremely rare Shirley speech, or them fearing another callout similar to what Annie had just experienced. _I don’t think I’ve **EVER** spoken that long before. Is this what it’s like to be Jeffery?_ Then Britta eventually spoke up, her tone much softer, likely dropping the therapist angle for a moment, “Shirley, of course we support you. We’re just… Worried. We don’t want baking to be your identity; you’re more than just that.”

“Oh, you mean just like how smoking weed isn’t your only thing but no one’s staged any interventions for you?” Shirley snapped. Britta stood up from her seat to defend herself, “Yes, but I am not an addict, Shirley.”

“I know that,” Shirley replied, much to Britta’s shock. “Look, we both said some things we likely didn’t mean… to that degree… during that day, but I **KNOW** what addiction looks like, Britta. It looks like you’re drowning at the bottom of a lake of Alcohol and the only way to get out of it is to drink it all up before the next heap gets thrown at you. I know that’s not where you are with the weed… And that’s not where I am; Not anymore anyways.”

“ _Brit-tah, do you know why I was upset with you?_ ” Shirley continued, though switching her tone to match the blonde’s earlier response, before carrying on with answering her own rhetorical question, “It’s not because of the weed; It’s because I felt that you, of all people, would have supported me. Aren’t you all about women empowerment? A couple months ago during the Paintball game, you told me to focus on my brownie business and I did. But then when I came to you all with baked goods, you all boycotted me.”

“This isn’t me playing housewife; sure, it may seem like it at times, but it’s good practice for my future business. If I get to make food for my friends instead of just my family, it gets to feel a little bit more legitimate than just baking brownies for my boys at home. Although to be perfectly honest, I’m getting tired of being seen by all of you as a mom; I’m almost the same age as Jeff.”

“How old is Jeff again? 34?” Troy whispers to Abed as an aside. Abed replies with a hushed inspector spacetime tone, “The question isn’t how old is he, Constable Reggie. But when old is he. Joking aside, I think he’s 34. Though some sources say in 2 years, he’ll be 40.”

Britta waves the two of them off in front of her as Annie unexpectedly moves to speak, seemingly shelving that GPA issue, for now at least, “Shirley, we don’t see you as a mom. But we do see you as a motherly person; those are two different things.”

“Yeah,” Britta agrees with her, as she stands up from her seat and joins Annie, “We all care about and respect you. And I do remember that paintball talk we had; It’s the reason I finally decided to pick a major. That was thanks to you. I’m so sorry I haven’t been more vocally supportive. I’ll try to be better at it.”

“Hug?” Britta finishes with a gesture she didn’t normally initiate on other women. Shirley replies happily as she calls her over, “ _Aww, that’s nice._ ”

“For the record, Shirley, that pie was great,” Britta supportively smiles as they embrace. Shirley gladly takes the compliment, “Oooh! Yay! And for the record, I take back what I said last week, Brit-tah; you’re not a skank.”  
“Thanks, Shirley. But didn’t you say ‘Godless hippie skank’?”  
“ _Hm-hmmmm. **Yessss,**_ ” Shirley trails off as she calls in the rest to join them in a group hug.

In the corner of her eye, she hears Troy whispering towards Abed once again, “What’s this paintball conversation they’re talking about?”

“I don’t know. They might’ve done it in the background, but I would’ve noticed that. I’m guessing it must’ve got cut from our memories somehow. We did inhale a **LOT** of paint fumes that day.”

As Annie joins the other two women, the boys then follow suit, followed by an aloof Pierce Hawthorne who barely makes it into the circle before the rest disperse back to their seats, “Thank you, guys. That was nice. Okay An-nie, will you do the honors and finish our story night and we can go to the party.”

“With pleasure. You guys want to hear a scary story? I’ve got a scary story,” With the Winger-less night going longer than expected, Annie Edison nodded as she took the reins to seemingly end the night on story six.


	7. Annie: Greene Dale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific Chapter Tags: Biting

Anne used to hate all Hallow’s Eve. Back where she came from, it simply heralded an occasion to act brash, terrify townsfolk and exclude less… favored people like her from participating in social gatherings. But that was in the past, and now she resided in the town of Greene Dale; she was already accepted, previous opioid addiction and street urchin status notwithstanding.

Torrential rain battered the roof shingles of Hawthorne Manor under the obscured, pale light of the full moon. During the previous two years, Anne had spent all Hallow’s Eve here; with who she now considered her family. And here she was again, sitting around the fireplace with six other unlikely friends, seemingly for the last time.

“I’m dying. Celebrate with me one last time in my mansion for old time’s sake,” Piercinald had told them all within his written invitation. Although probably a ruse that the old man had prepared in order to startle his companions with humor that she considered unconventional, it seemed unlikely as the guests included majority of Greene Dale’s residents. He had previously never allowed anyone else within arm’s reach of him, much less to his private abode; this seemed to indicate a sincere motive. That, or the sole purpose of this enormous party was to slight an uninvited Miss Vicki for stabbing Piercinald in the face close to a year ago. Piercinald’s father apparently held grudges. It seemed like that ran in the family.

“My friends… Thank you for coming to my abode once again. I’m not really dying,” the old heir to a handkerchief empire stated plainly to nobody’s surprise. “But I feel in my bones that I may be dead soon as I’ve been seeing things. Oddities that make me feel like I’m losing my mind; Ghosts that can go through doors, for one. However, that isn’t what spooked me enough to call you here tonight. If you knew what it was, you’d probably call me crazy, and old.”

“Noone’s going to call you, Piercinald,” Geoffrey joked as Anne swatted him on the arm.

“I would like to begin my bequeathments now. I have something for each of you; except for you, Abed. I find you strange beyond comprehension,” Piercinald dismissed their companion from the eastern realms whose face bore him no grudges, for the two never got along, “Miss Bennett, I’d like to begin with you. If you could follow me to my bedchambers, please?”

“ _Does it have to be in there?_ ” Miss Bennett protests softly before the two parted ways with the group.

After a moment of silence, Troightheach, or Troy as he preferred to be called, spoke up, “Friends, don’t worry too much about him. Piercinald has just been on edge since **SOMEONE** who-must-not-be-named departed from the mansion and started living elsewhere. He said it himself; he’s totally fine and not at all lonely. Although I do have to admit, things have been getting scarier around town.”

“Many vile creatures make the woods outside their home; some even warn of… monsters,” Geoffrey warns them all. Across from Anne, Ah-bed, a man with a thousand faces but lacking the ability to properly read one, nods ominously. She shivers in her seat, before putting out a confident half-fib, “I don’t believe in monsters.”

As Geoffrey is about to respond, Miss Bennett arrives and calls him in for the next bequeathment. When he departs, Anne excuses herself to gather up some refreshments and to see which other guests came in for the night.

\---

Anne reaches for a warm loaf of bread as she brushes against the cold, clammy hand of Professor Duncan, an odd man who had once called her a ‘British Ten’. After a collection of awkward pleasantries, a failed attempt from the incessant drunk to get her to wipe a mustard stain from his face, a tirade about his sick mother and that he’ll be departing from Greene Dale to care for her but shall return swiftly after he puts in his time, she politely excuses herself from conversation. As Anne walks away, he calls out behind her, “Would you mind getting me when Britta’s Drunk?”

 _Insufferable. How could he possibly think I would inform him of my friends’ level of intoxication?_ Lost in thought as she makes her way back to her companions, she bumps against Star Burns, the towns shady underdealer who looks much worse for wear than usual. Having been through the trials of addiction before, she takes the time to usher him towards the physician who she had spotted earlier that night, “Richard. I think this man has taken ill.”

“Yes. He’s not in very good shape, is he? Look at you with the hood; you look fantastic!” Richard gleams at her. She smiles back politely as she adjusts it subconsciously, “Oh, thank you.”

As they tend to Star Burns, Pelton, the town’s mayor pulls in another diseased, “Richard.”

“There’s more? Put her with the others,” Richard exclaims to the dalmatian-obsessed mayor, “You know, this may be the plague.”

“What did I tell you?” Pelton replies to him sternly. Richard sighs, “To always rule out the plague.”

“Yes but also, to not say it out loud,” the bald man states, waving onlookers on as Annie inspects the second patient. _Wait. What’s this?_ “Richard… is this… a bite mark?”

“Oh my god! I think you’re right!” the physician exclaims at her and begins to pivot the direction in which he dealt with the patients, “Anne, you make quite the nurse.”

She beams proudly. _Maybe I should enter into that profession one day._ Her daydreaming is swiftly interrupted as Britta taps on her shoulder, “Anne, your bequeathal is at hand.”

\---

“Anne, I know you’re being strong for me,” Piercinald weakly states as she enters his bedchamber, “I give you permission to weep.”

“I’m… Crying on the inside,” she replies gingerly in an attempt to humor him.

“Disgusting. Well in any case, I want to give you this. It’s been in my family for six generations. Now it’s yours.”

He hands her a Silver Tiara encrusted with diamonds. She had not known the old man a long time; but the townsfolk seemed to despise him with a passion. She mused that this was probably why he likely felt most at home with the rest of their circle. And why he chose them for his bequeathings over human beings he had likely known for much longer. Still. A tiara was… excessive. Especially for an orphan who had had to scrape and save just to afford a small room in the worst part of town. After the initial shock leaves her, she speaks, “You’re giving me a tiara? What does it mean?”

Piercinald smiles back at her with a look of regret, likely stemming from seven failed marriages and no legitimate children, “My girl… It means, you’re my favorite.”

He passes on an extremely rare and heartfelt sentiment. She nods appreciatively at him and places the gift it into her satchel. When she looks back towards him, the candle lights flicker into darkness. Suddenly, Anne feels _something_ or _someone_ brutally crash into her, slamming her across the room and into the cold, stone walls. Dropping to the ground, her strength begins to fail as she tries in vain to catch a glimpse of the assailant. The shadows, however, obscure her vision as the aftershock of the impact takes hold of her. And as she drifts off into the dark, the only thing that joins her there is the echoing voice of her old friend, screaming. Endless screaming.

\---

The first thing Anne realizes before she opens her eyes is the pain. Her body is throbbing and aching everywhere; the pressure on her arms and neck is immeasurable. As she comes to, Anne begins to recall the prior night; the party, the tiara, and the lights going out. _Piercinald!_ That’s when she smells it; the metallic and heavy scent of blood. She wills her eyes to open as she pushes herself up against a nearby dresser. More of it. Everywhere.

She stares across the room and it’s an endless sea; red ribbons and crimson strings. Anne nearly hurls and motions towards the bedroom door, satchel in hand as she keeps herself propped up against the wall. There was no need for any further inspection; Piercinald was dead. And she needed to find someone to see if she was okay.

\---

It was a long, arduous trek back towards the Urchin district. Between the constant body pain, and the vastly altered surroundings, everything in Greene Dale felt surreal. Everyone she saw on her way home was either dead, or looting. Casualties filled both the manor and street with no indication of any form of struggle. What she found strangest however, was that none of the broken bodies resembled Piercinald. Half-drained husks of human beings littered the ground like discarded food packages. She passed Richard’s physician’s hut on her way home; it was already a smoldering heap. Anne prayed that he, but most of all, that the rest her friends had made it out of this alive.

\---

Anne entered her meagre room through the window; her landlord, a man who Piercinald had at one point accused of looking like a rapist, had barred her entrance, stating that ‘This is my property now.’. He even had the audacity to shoot at her with a crossbow as she approached. He missed, but regardless, the sentiment that she was unwelcome was well-received. Still, she found it humorous knowing that a man who sold ‘magic wands’ to women and the occasional man chose to use something else as a weapon.

Her quarters are in disarray, everything of value likely raided by looters who had gotten around her landlord’s terrible aim and depth perception. Anne scavenged for something, anything, that could be of value: gauze, medicine, food, or water. Nothing remained intact. Except for a lone, stuffed bear inconspicuously placed squarely in the center of her destroyed bed.

Upon closer study, it had been cut open where it’s buttocks could have been. An object was lodged within it; a number, and a hastily drawn sketch of two human beings performing a secret handshake. _Bless my friends. They’re alive._

\---

Hovel 303, she confirmed twice before knocking on the door. Ah-bed peers through the slit of the door, then opens it halfway. His initial reaction is odd; he stares at her neck, raises his eyebrow and visibly sniffs twice before finally letting her in. Anne crashes into him with a hug which, after a pause of gauging social etiquette, he returns, “Come in. I take it that you found the clue I left in your bedroom?”

She nods proudly as they break from the hug and he motions for her to enter with a gentle pat on her shoulder, “I knew you’d figure it out; come inside. We’ve got to catch you up on a lot of things.”

They enter the hallway and he quickly points towards the highlights of his abode, “Bathroom, kitchen, who cares, and these… are who made it out of Hawthorne manor with me.”

 _Ah-bed. Troy. Miss Bennett. Britta. An Asian fellow who oddly went by the name of Benjamin. And Richard. Wait, where’s Geoffrey?_ They greet her warmly, but soon, that warmth dissipates when she comes closer. Troy exclaims loudly, “Whoa! Anne, what happened to you? Wait… are you… Turned?”

“Before we re-barricade the room, I need to ask if you’ve been bitten?” Richard inquires, his eyes betraying a change in his demeanor that she hadn’t ever seen in him before. _Was this all caused by those bites during the Hawthorne party?_

“You bit? Huh? You bit?” Benjamin exclaims, pointing at her accusingly. Suddenly, Anne feels a sharp, burning sensation on her arms and neck that she hadn’t realized earlier. It all dawns on her at once and she freezes; _Was I bitten while I was out? Wait. Am I going to die like those people on the streets?_ However, before she can descend further into madness, Ah-bed speaks out, “She’s safe. Some scratches here and there. At least one visible bite, but I’m sure she’s fine.”

She follows Ah-bed’s gaze towards Troy who nods in agreement. _Curious._ The rest of the group, however, seem hesitant at best to simply take his word for it. He always did have the habit of playing little games, after all, but he was always reliable when it counted. Despite all this, Richard objects vocally, “What’s happening outside seems to be a rabies-related disease, causing hyper-aggression and is spread through bites.”

“No need for all the medical-talk, Richard. You can call it what it is,” Britta waves the physician off before saying the layman’s term for it, “You think she’s a vampire.”

 _Vampire? Those aren’t real. I don’t believe in monsters. But, wait. Even if I was one, I went out in the sun. Shouldn’t I have burned?_ The discussion continues around her as her ears continue to ring, her cognizance beginning to cloud her thoughts. Towards the corner, Miss Bennett prays vehemently to her lord, “ ** _It’s the end of days…_** My lord, kindly deliver me _and most of these people_ , into your gracious bosom.”

“Enough!” Richard proclaims out loud, trying to fill the Geoffrey-shaped hole that was missing from their group, “She’s been bitten. I like Anne as much as the rest of you, but we need to protect ourselves. I say we lock her up in a cage tonight, and see if she turns. If she doesn’t, then we let her out. But if she does…”

He trails off ominously as the group seems to understand the underlying sentiment. Anne swallows deeply, but ultimately agrees. They’re her friends, after all. Surely, she wasn’t sick. There’s no way she would be. And even if she was, after what they’ve all been through, they would find a way to cure her; they had to, “So… How do I know if I’m… turning?”

“First you get a stomachache. Then your skin turns pale. Followed by cold sweats, muscle spasms, dropping temperatures then the uncontrollable urge to bite uninfected flesh,” Richard explains to her. In the past 24 hours, she had experienced every one of those symptoms, barring the urge to feed. But that could’ve been attributed to blunt-force trauma and seeing Piercinald… in the state that she saw him. She wasn’t a Vampire. She couldn’t be.

\---

Anne enters the basement cage willingly. As she does, Britta makes a lighthearted comment in an attempt to improve the mood, “I’ve been locked in places way worse than this. Not against my will.”

She politely smiles back at the blonde before inquiring about everything that had gone down in the last 24 hours. Her friends take shifts watching her, in an attempt to ease their nerves, and her own. And as the sun wears down, and the day turned to night, she discovers a few new things about the people and the world that she had previously thought she had known so well:  
  
The outbreak happened around the time she had blacked out.  
Mayor Pelton had escaped into the night and would be back in around 30 days with an ‘Army’ of sorts, and the only bridge out of town was destroyed shortly after he fled.  
The hallway towards Piercinald’s chambers her was infested with Vampires by the time her friends discovered the situation.  
Ah-bed figured she would find a way to escape on her own and decided to plant a rendezvous point in an area he figured she would flee towards, and the group agreed. However, despite their best efforts to stick together, Geoffrey decided to rush in, alone, to save her.  
And on the way out, they discovered Richard on the way to Anne’s home as they passed his pharmacy.

“Ah-bed… You seem to be into the myths of monsters. What are they like? Vampires? I’d like to know if ever I…” Anne worriedly trails off, her voice cracking from the fear. He shakes her head to calm her, “You’re not a Vampire, Anne. Your wounds look… Different. But sure, I can explain. First off, most of what you probably knew from those non-fiction books are a lie. Vampires don’t burn out under the sun, and they don’t sparkle either. Although they do get weaker during the day.”

“They’re faster and stronger at night time. So it’s basically a game of cat and mouse at this point. During the day, we hunt them. At night, they hunt us. They can recognize other Vampires if they’ve been sired by the same Alpha. They bite for three purposes; for pleasure, to rejuvenate injuries, or to propagate. They can eat food just like normal human beings, although they do really hate garlic,” Ah-bed finishes before getting up to switch shifts. Anne calls out to him as he leaves, “Wait! Why did you trust me?”

After another pause, he replies, “Because you’re Anne. Because I think you’re clean. And even on the off-chance that you’re not… You’re strong. And driven; I know you’ll find a way to work something out without having to kill people and have everything come out okay in the end. Now get some rest. When the rest clear you tomorrow morning, we have some vampire hunting to do.”

\---

“Anne. Anne,” Richard ends her restful slumber. Groggily, she gets up from the cage floor and heads towards the edge of the bar, “Richard..? Is it morning already? Does that mean I’m well?”

“Not just yet, I’m afraid. It’s my shift to watch you now and I’m here to give you some medicine. For the pain,” he approaches her with caution as he offers her some herbs and water to wash it down. She accepts them graciously, “Thank you for this, Richard. I appreciate it. But please, there’s no need to be afraid. Trust me, I’m fine; I’m not a vampire.”

“I know,” he replies casually before sinking his teeth sink deeply into her neck. Anne tries to scream out, but words escape her. She flails violently against the rim of the cage, pounding and kicking against him as her energy starts to drain away. Soon, her feet go limp. Then her arms. But just as she’s about to pass out for the second night in a row, Richard lets out a painful scream as a wooden stake is driven squarely into his chest.

“Bennett, you missed!” Britta exclaims as Richard gets back up from the ground, mortally wounded but still alive. “ ** _Well, excuse me for making sure we could interrogate the bitch._** You saw what he did to poor An-ne.”

Troy rushes to her to stymie the blood loss, applying a quick tourniquet by tearing off a piece of his neck guard in the process. For a brief moment, she catches a glimpse of some scars before he covers them up once again. _Are those old bite marks?_ Slowly, she regains control of her arms and legs and gets back up again to see Richard struggling on the floor as the two other women struggle to keep him restrained, “Impossible! How haven’t you turned!?!”

Miss Bennett knocks a wooden club against his right temple, “ ** _We’re asking the questions here, doctor._** Tell us why you did what you did and I’ll end you, quick and painless. _And if you don’t, I’ll let Britta do it._ ”

“Yeah! Wait, hey!” Britta protests loudly. Resigned to his impending death, Richard confesses, “I figured if I could turn her, maybe she could help me get the rest of you. And if she failed…”

He trails off, silently admitting his intentions to remain a hidden predator while using her as bait.

“Good enough for me. Britta?” Miss Bennett gestures towards the restrained Vampire who now begins flailing in fear, “Wait, **NO!** ”

“Stay still! Let me fill your heart hole!” Britta stabs him repeatedly missing his vitals for several minutes before his body finally lays still. In the wake of the violence, Ah-bed and Benjamin walk into the basement, returning from a would-be surveillance mission. Instantly, the Asian man panics, “ **WHOA!** You got bit!”

They keep her locked in the cage for the rest of the evening, watching her together, just to be sure. But Richard’s earlier words proved true; she does not turn. Abed sports a rare smile and tells the rest of the group the news that he had likely known all along, “Let her out, friends; She’s immune.”

\---

Anne, alongside the rest of the Greene Dale Five, and Benjamin spend the next few weeks scavenging and slaying vampires during the day, while improving equipment and triangulating the vampiric source at night.

“If we could theoretically just kill the Alpha, what happens?” she asks quizzically one night as she muses a quick fix to the vampire problem.

“The entire brood dies out. Though some of them may be strong enough to make it out alive,” he replies, picking up a blunted block of wood before he begins to sharpen it.

“Then, shouldn’t we just look for them and end it? All vampires are evil anyway.”

“Most. Anomalies like repentant vampires exist; and if there’s one in a brood, there are likely more than just one among them. I’d say the plan is kill the Alpha unless we find someone who can control their urge to feast on human flesh. If that happens… We play it by ear.”

Anne nods in agreement, “Ah-bed..?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you know so much about vampires?”

“I learned about them years ago back home in Poland. Since then, I’ve made it my business to be prepared… Just in case it happens again…”

He has a faraway look in his eye as he compulsively sharpens the block until it’s length borders on unusable. She pries no further.

\---

“One of their leads had to have had to have access to the Mayor’s office before Pelton left Greene Dale,” she tells Ah-bed as she analyzes the map of the town with scrutiny, “How else would they have known the exact place to sabotage the bridges as soon as he left town?”

“But if that’s the case, wouldn’t they have just broken down the crossover before he escaped. You’re suggesting that they let him out on purpose?” Ah-bed questioned her, leaning over her shoulder as he joined her in staring down the town’s architecture. She moved several wooden meeples and a spotted dog into Greene Dale heights, and then surrounded them with vampires, “Unless the plan was for him to bring them more food. Or to instantly convert a trained Army.”

“Okay. We have got to end this before those troops get here. We’ve got to find where their main hub is at,” he inches closer to the map, or to her, she couldn’t really tell. Anne’s heartbeat quickens as she feels his breath upon her skin, “Uhm… No matter how much vamps we eliminate in this zone by the markets, they always seem to be more the next day. I think, they have a shortcut. The surrounding areas are open clearings with the exception of…”

“The stables.” Anne states confidently and looks back at him; their eyes meet. The contact lasts briefly before his eyes begin to drift away; down towards her neck. _He couldn’t possibly? No. Those vampires are monsters who crave young flesh. Surely if he was…_ She trails off before he questions her further, “We have a stables?”

“Yes! And going by these underground aqueducts, the only hub they seem to be connected to is…” Anne trails off. Their eyes meet once more and he taps two fingers onto her forehead, “You’re brilliant. Let’s get the equipment ready. Are the neck-guards you designed ready for combat use?”

“Yeah…” She replies smiling endlessly, biting her lower lip, trying and failing to suppress a blush that she knew ran across her entire face.

\---

“I am the smartest one in this group and I’ll have been used for is bait and distraction,” Anne protests to the group adamantly. They all collectively look at her neckline and she covers up, resigning herself to the obvious role of risk-free vampire lure that only she could perform, “Ugh. Go on your stupid mission. I hope it sucks.”

“What did she say?” Troy asks Ah-bed. He shrugs back with a smile at his best friend, “I don’t know.”

“All I heard is suck,” Troy finishes up. The group lightly chuckles at the dark humor as they begin to keep their distance from her and back her up only if need be.

“Oh cool, a dark basement,” she muses to herself, as she increases the distance between her and her companions, though not enough as to entirely make her untrackable. As she walked through the underground halls alone, she mentally scolded herself for taking this long to figure it out. The signs were quite clear once they were all put together. And the name of the district destination was just icing on the Vampire Stake: Little Brittania.

As Anne approached the end of the aqueduct, a hand grabbed her by the waist as another masked her mouth to stifle an impending scream. She could tell by touch alone that the monster was hostile and it would only be a matter of time be a matter of time before it would sink its teeth into her neck. But she wouldn’t give them that chance.

She kicked their kneecap sharply and rushed forward before turning towards her assailant. He was a young, dark skinned man with dreadlocks named Luke. Although Anne recalled that he had almost never referred to himself using that name when he was human. He grimaced at her with wild eyes as he shot up from the floor, making a mad dash towards her, screaming out the same word as each of his two fangs erupted from his mouth, “ **POP! POP!** ”

Though bait she was, Anne was not the helpless girl that she was nearly a month ago. Luke was quick; but she was quicker. With a ‘pop pop’ of her own, she ended him as swiftly as charged, with a double tap through the chest. She shook her head. _So much violence. I can’t wait ‘til this is over._ That Drunk, Tea-Drinking, Wang-waving sod had to die, “Let’s end this, Duncan.”

\---

The battle with Duncan was extremely anti-climactic. Her encounter with Luke had been far more life-threatening, even if she could call it that at all, “It’s not fair! There were so many of you and only one of me! It’s not even night yet!”

“Well, you should have thought of that before falling for the bait,” Anne told him bluntly. All it took was news of a blonde Swede sighting on the north Quad and he had diverted his entire horde to, “Get Britta.”

“Your lifestyle mistakes are none of our business,” Miss Bennett chimed in as Ah-bed nods along, “Alright, Anne. Empty two bolts into his comedically large nose and end this.”

“Wait! Don’t kill me! I’m not the Alpha! I swear, I can change!” Duncan protests in vain before she ends him. In the distance, they hear the screams of several vampires wailing in agony. _Are they dying?_ She turns to Ah-bed and breathes a sigh of relief, “Is it over?”

“Perhaps. Although I don’t like how he said that he wasn’t the Alpha,” Ah-bed states as a low rumble begins to echo from the end of the corridor. Suddenly, darkness falls and the night approaches as laughter cascades down the hallway. Ah-bed’s face turns pale, “Wait. I know that laugh.”

“Hello… Bro… ther,” A pale-skinned man, clad in a long flowing cape enters view, his long teeth sharp like daggers, gleaming through faint candle-light, “Long time no see, yes? I’m so sorry for poor Duncan, that I arrived just a little bit too late, but it was just too early and I was… Mad sleepy.”

Pavel Iwaszkiewicz steps into the light, flanked by dozens of Vampires. Anne stares at Ah-bed, then back to the alpha and exclaims, “Ah-bed!?! You know this monster?”

“Ouch. That’s wicked cold, bro. You didn’t introduce me to your delicious friend?” Pavel mocks being hurt as he motions for the other vampires to advance. Ah-bed replies to her, while still staring down his old acquaintance, “That’s Pavel. I knew him years ago… We used to be friends in Poland.”

“Whoa. As much as that thought is wrinkling my brain right now, I think we need to maybe go…” Troy exclaims before recommending for them to make an expeditious retreat, to which Ah-bed concurs wholeheartedly, “Indeed. I am going to run. Vampire Attack!”

\---

After several hit-and-run skirmishes and an eventual Benjamin betrayal, the Greene Dale 5 manage to corner Pavel back where it all started; Hawthorne Manor.

“We’ll hold the rest of them off here, buddy. I think we’ve almost got this. I see the army coming in the distance. You two finish him before he gets away,” Troy exclaims to Ah-bed and Anne as Britta and Miss Bennett barricade the hallway. They both nod in agreement and give chase together.

\---

“You think you have me cornered, but I have one more trick up my sleeve. I’ve kept him locked up here for a month. And he is just _famished_ ,” Pavel exclaims as he unleashes his last trump card. Anne freezes in place when she sees him for the first time in weeks; she had thought him dead. She hears Ah-bed shout to her to snap out of it, and to focus on Pavel and not at the man that is barreling towards her. To let him handle Geoffrey instead. And she wants to, but her body can’t physically move. And so her world in its entirety halts for a moment as Geoffrey’s fangs sink into her neck.

After a breathless moment, his fangs recede from her neck as he pushes her away, “Be gone, innocent one! You once told me that you didn’t choose to believe in monsters, but now I clearly am one!”

Before Geoffrey goes on a tirade about lamenting his vacillating emotions, Anne slaps him squarely on the jaw, “Snap out of it; you’re better than this. Deal with your own self-pity later; our friend is in danger!”

In the distance, she sees Pavel dueling Ah-bed. Anne only makes out a few words as she rushes towards his aid, “Nice find, bro. … _tap_ that? … might not be able to turn her, … the _best for feeding_.”

A seemingly distracted Ah-bed is felled by Pavel just as Anne clashes with him. Pavel scoffs at her appearance, “What? My Geoffrey distraction didn’t last too long. Considering how **_repressed_** he was, I was expecting the feed to last at least six seasons.”

In a flash of cold steel and righteous fury, she dismembers his leg for the retort, leaving him gasping and crawling away from her on the floor. Ah-bed coughs softly as he props himself up against a nearby pillar, “Anne… It’s over. Don’t kill him. He’s sired a repentant vampire; Geoffrey’s not bloodthirsty. There has got to be more of them.”

“If Geoffrey can stop himself from feeding, I’m sure some of the others can too. That path is harder but we have to at least try,” Ah-bed finishes. Anne hesitates, clenching her jaw in anger as she stares down at the fallen Alpha. The pain and suffering this Vampire had caused surely was worth the retribution. But was it worth possibly ending the lives of innocents? She stills her blade, pausing to further undergo contemplation. But Geoffrey makes the decision for her.

“Sorry Anne, this isn’t up for debate,” Geoffrey stabs him with Ah-bed’s fallen blade as Pavel flails about on the ground in agony before letting out a breathless sigh. Anne stares in horror as Geoffrey let’s out an agonizing scream which is soon joined by a chorus of countless others all around Greene Dale; the Vampire threat is over.

Geoffrey drops to the ground, glassy eyed and cold, having freed himself from Pavel’s grasp. _But at what cost? Was that his decision to make? There could have been more of them._ Anne’s tears cascade down her cheeks as she mourns the loss of quite possibly her fiercest friend, before the sound of ragged gasps brings her back to reality. Ah-bed! She rushes to his side, leaving Geoffrey as she pulls Ah-bed close. He’s bleeding terribly. Through uneasy coughs and with a dribble of blood against his lips, he begs her, “Anne… Get Troy.”

“Why?” Anne proclaims as her tears welling up once more before they splattered down against his cheek, “Come on, Anne. Stop joking around. We both know you know why.”

“No; why him?” She protests his stubbornness angrily. He shrugs weakly, “He’s my best friend.”

“And what about me? What am I? What about the Anne of it all? The long looks? The stolen glances? Working late nights together?”

“You’re… I don’t know. Not my best friend… Maybe something else; maybe something more.”

“Then please, let me help you. Please,” Anne begs him, leaning in close to him. They stare into each other’s eyes once as she leans her forehead against his. Ah-bed nods. She pulls her hair back and arches her neck back to give him room. Ah-bed’s warm breath washes against her neck as his lips approach. Closer. Closer. His lips, soft and gentle, brush her skin and she sighs deeply as a shiver runs down her spine. She wills him on, cradling the back of his head against her neck, “I consent.”

He plants a soft kiss upon her neck. Then nothing. No bites; no pain. She parts from him, rejected and confused, before looking back down at him with her doe eyes. His reaction is equally perplexed, “Your mouth isn’t curved upwards. Did I misread something?”

“Weren’t you supposed to bite me… Or something? To you know… heal?” Anne replies awkwardly. He charmingly replies, “I wanted to kiss you. As for the bite; give me your finger. I didn’t want to mar your neck’s beautiful complexion any further.”

“Oh,” she smiles shyly as a blush creeps up against her face, pulling the glove of her arm to assist him as she spots Geoffrey in the corner of her eye, rising back up as he uncomfortably, but supportively keeps his distance to them space.

\---

Anne smiles as Troy, Britta and Miss Bennett enter the room followed by Pelton and the army. _Finally, it’s all over._ Troy rushes towards his friend and gives him a warm hug before her smile quickly dissipates as two soldiers violently separate them and place Ah-bed in chains. “What? Pelton, what’s the meaning of this?”

“I’m sorry, Anne, but it’s protocol. He’s a vampire, we can’t be too sure about these things. **NO EXCEPTIONS** ,” Pelton explains to the group, visibly uncomfortable with what he has to do. Geoffrey pats Anne’s shoulder in support, “Well, I’m a vampire now too, so... If they take him, they’ll have to take me too.”

“ _Actually…_ Lucky for you, I’m a firm believer of second chances. Why don’t we let dear Ah-bed go and we can all just forget this all happened,” Pelton’s tone changes instantly as he turns to the army to shoo them away, having discovered Geoffrey’s current state. The soldiers, however, push him aside and shove Ah-bed into a wooden cage-wagon.

The rest of the evening happens in a flash. Her friends, weary from battling vampires all day fight on in vain as one by one, they too are restrained for allegedly aiding and abetting the vampiric threat. Miss Bennett is captured first. Geoffrey in a weakened state is shackled, but not killed, likely kept alive a trophy for the ‘conquering army’. Then both Britta and Troy are taken as they attempt to break out Ah-bed from his cage.

As midnight strikes, Anne stands alone, and cornered by dozens of men. Hope fades. But then the full moon rises and she transforms as a feral howl escapes her lips. Her hands grow claws. Her teeth sharpen. Suddenly, the situation isn’t so hopeless anymore. With that, Anne charges into the soldiers, prepared to rip them apart with fang and claw.

\---

“And she **RIPPED** into their torsos like a gerbil shredding a Quaker oats box, sending chunks of viscera and an aerosol mist of blood all over the nearly soldiers. Then, she flossed her teeth with their tendons before swallowing an eye which descended down her throat, to join the partially digested flesh in her stomach,” Annie ended her story enthusiastically. All five people in the group seemed utterly concerned with her story, with the exception of Abed who seemed to be taking down plot-points and nodding along throughout the whole tale, “Nice twist.”

“Wow Annie, I didn’t know you were such a fan of… Gore,” Britta paused slowly as she scribbled on her notepad with a pen that wasn’t hers. Annie raises her eyebrow, questioning her non-psychologist friend’s question, “It’s Halloween. If you’re gonna tell a scary story, give it some texture.”

“But your texture was so discompassionately macabre, as if without the slightest regard for human life,” Britta prodded her on, but before she could respond, Abed chimed in, “I don’t know, Britta. I felt like the gore was necessary for the narrative element. The story was cool, although I do have a couple questions: What happened to the tiara, do we ever find out who turned her, did the girl kill the old man or was it her attacker, and… does she end up saving the awkward vampire?”

“Well… I don’t know, Abed. I guess we’ll just have to find out…” She trails off with a cheerful smile. He points at her, “Sequel?”

She nods back at him as he pumps a fist in the air, “Nice.”

“ _Oh, well I guess we’ll have to do that another night… It’s now past 10PM thanks to An-nie’s story which took at least two times longer than any of our stories. **I ain’t paying a babysitter $10 an hour to look after my kids so I can sit on a couch all night.** Let’s go to that party _,” Shirley exclaims passive-aggressively. Annie frowns at her but concedes that her story did go a little long, “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”__

__Annie, Pierce, Shirley and Abed rise up from their seats as Britta and Troy move to stop them, “No! Wait!”_ _

__Suddenly, the light goes out once more. Murmurs fill the room as the darkness lingers longer than it had previously. Troy voices his appreciation, “Man, this is dope. The dean really did this for Halloween? So awesome.”_ _

__As the lights stabilize, the group lets out a collective gasp as a seventh person, clad in an unusually thick snow jacket and hoodie standing before them._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Amrywiol and a NoGoodB for some Analysis regarding character OOC-ness.
> 
> Come Join us on Discord.


	8. Jeff: Winger Speech with a Twist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific Chapter Tags: Talks of Loneliness

Despite his abysmal disposition of miserable and hung-over, he pulls over into the Cafeteria side parking lot of Greendale having just braved through the snow. While being famously known among his friends for being consistently late, Jeffery Tobias Winger was no flake. Before leaving the warm confines of his Lexus, Jeff anxiously goes through his most recent text messages; nothing from the Study group again.

It had been a week since he last saw his friends at Troy and Abed’s new apartment. Since then, his phone usage had been abnormally sparse. Sure, he’d read all the group messages which consisted of oddly _cold and distant_ well-wishes regarding the importance of snowstorm safety and a blanket invitation to Britta’s pre-party, but barring a text from Abed thanking him for the $20 he shelled out for pizza, and a reminder to bring Annie’s cardigan to the party, nothing remotely personalized came his way. Not from his friends, anyway.

During the entirety of last week, he had made one call; an embarrassingly regrettable drunk dial to an Ex-Girlfriend/Professor wherein he was thoroughly and outright rejected. And had sent two messages. The first, he crafted as a response to Abed’s message: “I’ve got to make some polite appearances tonight before coming over. If it ends before I get there, I’ll catch you all at the party,”. 

A lie. One he had told countless times to his friends and himself before, for there were no ‘polite appearances’ for Jeff to make that night; none that he intended on going to, barring the actual party, that was. The second message paralleled the first, but ended with a more definitive note: “I’ve got to make some polite appearances tonight. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,”.

Rejecting Duncan’s invitation for a night out at the pub had come much easier to him; the last time he hung out with the brit, it cost him $35 in Cab money, and ended with him getting a Crazy Ex-Teacher as a roommate for a month. Hard no. Britta’s pre-party, however, he felt guilty for blowing off, but he didn’t think he could handle seeing _her_ again so soon. At least, not without being able to have an easy escape route in the form of alcohol, or a carefully pre-orchestrated dean-straction to break from a private conversation in case things got too real too fast.

As he steps out of his car, Jeff unenthusiastically slings a two-year old, previously unused backpack against one of his shoulders. He once told his Study group once before that he would never deprive the world of the part of his chest that the strap would cover. But the world’s disappointment would have to suck it; there is no way Jeff Winger would enter a room carrying a Hot Pink Cardigan without any form of camouflage.

9:43 PM. Fashionably late. Time to get this Halloween Scare-Tacular dance party done with. 

\---

With none of his study group friends in sight on the outskirts of the cafeteria, Jeff delves deeper through a sea of human beings to find of them. If this was held at the Library like last year, locating his friends would’ve been much easier. Though in hindsight, the change of venue was probably for the best, seeing as that nobody could remember anything during last year’s celebration, besides the endless loop of Abba music and the Dean’s incredibly personal shopping list. _I mean seriously, who needs to make a reminder to buy a blacklight? You know what? Don’t dwell on that…_

“Trick or Dean!” a familiar voice exclaims, startling him as the man pops out of nowhere. _Man, every time you think about that man, he pops up like some kind of evil Genie._ Jeff turns see Craig dressed up as some kind of purple witch. He nods in acknowledgement, “Dean.”

“Have you been here long, Jeffery? Sorry it took me so long to find you. You don’t normally wear things like… this,” Craig proclaims, pointing towards his ensemble, “Well, it is pretty cold outside. I’ll take this jacket off as soon I… Oh, you’re talking about the backpack.”

“Yes! I spotted you from behind and I had to do a double-take after seeing you wearing one. Didn’t you say that you’d never dean-prive the world of the part of your chest the strap would cover? I almost didn’t recognize you if it weren’t for…” the Dean’s eyes drift downwards and to the side. _What could he possibly mean by… My butt. The dean could tell it was me by staring at the back of my jeans. Great. So that’s a thing now._

Suddenly, the lights in the cafeteria flicker out, causing a sea of protests from the students as the music cuts out intermittently, before switching back on, “Crappy dean, what’s up with the lights? It’s been happening for a week.”

“I had the lights rigged to flicker because it’s Halloween week!” The dean states with false enthusiasm. He cracks back quickly, “So the lights will be back to normal November first?”

“I’m sorry, Jeffery. But I already promised Troy earlier that I’d keep it around for All-Saints day Month. No takebacks,” Craig says sheepishly, likely using Troy’s youthful cheer to his advantage in turning Greendale’s worthless budget into some kind of ‘gimmick’ to explain away the fact that the school was broke, “Where are Troy and others anyway? I haven’t seen them anywhere.” 

“Oh, they must still be in the study room. Britta was hosting some kind of pre-party there and then they started telling scary stories. I listened in for a while to observe. You know, just to make sure they were okay… I was a little bit worried since it looked like Troy and Britta were sort of taking charge of the whole thing by the time I left,” Craig explained. _Okay. Confirmation that the Dean listens in on us. Wait. How did he know what I said last year about that backpack strap? Wasn’t he in that puppy parade when we were dealing with Annie’s ‘principled’ pen? Note to self, the Study-Room F may be bugged,_ “Did you say Troy and Britta were in charge?”

“I know, right? They pulled away from the group to do a private talk and everything. Very progressive.”

 _Well, that can’t be good._ Craig continued, sharing information about the current night while subtly digging for dirt in the process, “Although everyone seemed really at odds with one another for quite a bit. You know, it makes me wonder if something happened during the housewarming at Troy and Abed’s apartment.”

 _Okay. Study-Room F is DEFINITELY bugged._ The dean possibly couldn’t have known about the rest of the group going through… whatever it was they were going through right now. Besides Abed, everybody seemed to be out of sorts. By the time they left, at least 3 pairs of people were at odds with each other for one reason or another. Britta and Shirley. Troy and Pierce. Annie and himself. 

Jeff’s brain mentally flinches as flashbacks of bubblegum lip gloss and booze crash into him one after the other. He had replayed that horrible kissing experience in his head the entire week. But, surprisingly enough to him, that discomfort was easily dwarfed by the hurt he felt when he first checked on his phone for the first time that week only to see that nobody had reached out to check if he was okay. As he zones out, Craig continues to ramble on beside him, “I left right after Shirley’s story. She ended on a high note about two men celebrating gay marriage. I figured that would be all downhill from there.”

How would that night have gone differently, he wondered to himself if just one of his actions had been different. If he hadn’t stopped Britta from playing Roxanne. If he had stopped Shirley from running towards her with some pie. If he had let Annie’s admittedly gross comment go. Or had he not come up with a plan to avoid becoming the pizza-getter. He should’ve just gotten the damned pizza. Then, none of this would have probably been happening.

“Note to self. Buy a dean-vil outfit and a wed-dean dress,” Craig pulls out his phone and makes a reminder for himself to add to his growing list of wardrobe changes, “Jeffery, are you okay? You haven’t spoken in minutes. Jeffery?”

Pelton’s hand endearingly finds its place against his chest just like it always has, but this time, its intended effect misses its mark entirely. Jeff jerks back and pulls away from the dean as their eyes meet in apparent shock at his involuntary reaction.

“I… I’m sorry,” Jeff shakes his head slightly with a sigh, “I think I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

“Oh. Uhm… That’s alright, Jeffery. I’m sorry; did you want to talk about it?” Craig offers. Jeff notices him keeping a more respectful distance as he politely declines, “Thanks, but I think I’ll be fine; You said they were still in the study room?”

“Yes. It was quite a mess for a while; they were arguing about some kind of misunderstanding with Abed and Pierce. Then there was this story about some kind of butt.”

“That was Troy’s story, wasn’t it? He get’s pretty focused on the butt st… Hold on. You saying they’re fighting?” Jeff interjects, unable to hide a growing grin on his face. Cold, awkward silences were always more uncomfortable barriers for him to break than people loud and angry. If the study group was fighting, that meant that he could help last week’s incident blow over. And he knew just how to do it, “Excuse me, Dean. I’ve got a speech to deliver.”

He nods at Craig who simply smiles back at him as he heads out of the cafeteria, oddly noticing the lack of a shoulder touch as he passes the dean by. _Come to think of it, did he miss using ‘Dean-stracted’ and ‘Misunderstan-dean’ towards the end of the conversation there?_

\---

 _This better not be a repeat of one of those ‘Bottle Episodes’ that Abed hates so much._ As he steps into the Library, Jeff wonders if this would be similar to the time they collectively reminisced through shared memories, the intense calligraphy inspection, or something entirely different. When the night began, entering the study room had been the furthest from his mind; the thought of being bottled up and unable to walk away from a conversation with her made his stomach sink. And yet there he was, rushing towards it knowing full well that he’d have to deal with that moment when it came. He had put it off for over a year; defining the relationship.

What they were, he didn’t fully know himself. There were no easier words to explain what they had other than, ‘it was complicated’. Oddly enough, leaving things undefined just added to the mess. The logical, sane decision was for them to talk about it, yet he put it off. Why, he didn’t know. Or didn’t want to know. But now, he was marching towards the room knowing full well that it would come today. That, however, was a small price to pay for being able to de-escalate a 1-week cold war that threatened to explode between his five closest friends, and Pierce Hawthorne. Classic Winger speech to take it home just like he always does and everything would be back to normal again.

He takes the back entrance to Study Room F that he normally avoids, in part because he’s later than he usually is but mostly because he figures that surprise entrance from behind as opposed to a grander one would be more impactful this time. As Jeff rounds the corner, his expectations of being hit by a wave of shouts and accusations being flung around between friends are quashed as he encounters a questionable form of silence. He steps into Study Room F to encounter nothing but the upbeat voice of Annie Edison as she enthusiastically tells a story about vampires. _Twilight, really? Isn’t that a little 2008?_ The anticipated angry, uncomfortable faces are nowhere to be found, replaced by a group of friends, simply enjoying each other’s company; perhaps, with the exception of Shirley who seems to only be politely smiling as she constantly stares at her phone as if she had to be someplace else. Among them, Abed and Britta are both taking notes, seemingly for entirely different reasons. Troy is engrossed in the story completely, and Pierce, despite struggling to follow along, even sports a smile whenever she describes a would-be vampire getting killed off. _Wait, was that last one Duncan?_

Jeff leans against the book case at the side of the door, pondering the unusual turn of events. The Dean said it himself; they were at each other’s throats earlier. Over the course of less than an hour, they seem to have resolved their issues. Troy was holding a Box gift wrapped similarly to the one he received from Pierce the other week. Shirley quietly passes a can of Splingles to Britta. His friends who seemed like they wanted nothing to do with each other turned around and resolved their issues. _Without me._

It had only taken them less than five minutes of Abed being gone for the group to descend into utter chaos, triggering a week-long ghosting period wherein nobody really truly interacted with one another. And it took one night _without Jeff_ for every argument that day to mend organically without the need for a Winger speech; he had rushed there thinking that they needed him to function, but here he was, staring at his study group; a fully functional Greendale Six. Minus Jeffery Winger.

Only one more rift to fix now he tells himself, anxiously as he stares at her. Annie Edison – headstrong, passionate and driven in everything she does, even her storytelling. _This kid’s got real talent._ He catches himself saying that word again. _‘Kid.’_ As much as he tried to shake it off, since his conversation with her weeks ago he still catches himself bringing up the kid talk. He had used it sparingly during the first two school years, but this time around, he noticed himself relying on it with increasing frequency. Barring last week’s kiss, there also that incredibly concerning comment ‘other’ Annie had thrown at them both prior to the Model UN-off. Pushing that out of memory as quick as it came in, he takes into account everything that happened so far during school year three, and it had only been a month. Problems cropped up too soon, too frequently, in the span of way-too-close-together:  
Lying to the group about his intentions of getting rid of Pierce only for the old man to save him when Annie told him that she no longer wanted to be his friend.  
Calling her a little school girl in front of dozens of people.  
Letting her carry him during their “Todd Problem” project, then when he got called out on it, he proceeds to accuse her of just being a good grade in a tight sweater.  
Last weeks bubblegum infused kiss as a snapback defense mechanism.

To her off-handed, nonintentional dad comment. Jeff knows the choice language he had been throwing her over the past year was a defense mechanism; a crutch. Between the kiddos and accusations of being a precocious bitch, deep down, he knew that she was important to him. And yet despite that, he had been an incredibly bad friend. He wanted to be better; and to grow closer to her, but… There’s that ‘but’ again. A relationship with someone should be easier; not this complicated. And barring Shirley and Pierce for different but clearly obvious reasons, Annie could have had that with anybody, without the baggage.

Annie and Troy could have been a thing; she did like him throughout half of the first year in Greendale after all. Until she ended up dating Vaughn and he got involved, that was. He wasn’t jealous of Vaughn. If he was, he wouldn’t have tried to set her up with Troy. He just genuinely cared that she wouldn’t get with a gateway douchebag and spiral into a shotgun wedding with someone like Star Burns. Though he does figure that the relationship seemed to transition into a more sibling vibe, and that would be a different kind of weird. There was Annie and Britta, too, he supposes; he did hear about an almost kiss they shared that night he hung out with Duncan. _Yeah, but they do fight a lot._ Annie and Abed?

As her story continues, Annie describes a hungry Vampire who seemed to be a close friend of the protagonist rush towards her, and she just lets it happen. The vampire then recoils in disgust at his own lack of self-control, and spouts about wanting her to keep distance from him. That’s when his mind makes sense of it all; the reason why he despised the thought of having the talk all this time. It wasn’t about her: she seemed to only mirror his disapproval whenever he brought it up first. It wasn’t about their friends: they supported Rich wholeheartedly when she asked him out. It was entirely on Jeffery Winger and the fact that he was uncomfortable with himself. And as much as he hated to admit it, he knew that this discomfort wasn’t something that would change overnight.

Jeff only notices it when she romanticizes a scene where a different vampire is kissing Anne’s neck; the bright twinkle in the eyes of one Abed Nadir as he looks at her. From there, the pieces fall into place. Both their lips being inconspicuously paint-free after last year’s Paintball. Abed taking control of the rest of the group during the Model UN-Off to propel her into a win that she sorely wanted. Choosing each other during the “Todd Problem” project when their initial pairings failed to live up to expectations. And now as she stares into his eyes, almost as if the story was just for him. _Huh. I can’t say I saw that one coming._ He smiles genuinely, surprised at his own reaction as she finishes her story in a flash of blood and gore. _I’ll give it a bit more time before I walk in._

\---

As the lights flicker back, Jeff leans over the unoccupied chair of their storytelling semi-circle. Oddly, his friends stare at him with looks of shock and confusion. A short silence lingers until Shirley speaks, “ _Hellooo… Can we help you?_ ”

Pushing through their absurd reaction, he unslings his backpack and begins unzipping it and they all begin to shout in terror. _I don’t get it. What’s happening? Oh, wait._ Jeff pulls down his hoodie, revealing himself to the group, “Guys, relax. It’s me.”

A collective sigh breaks out from everyone and the tense vibe in the Study room dissipates as they all begin to greet him warmly. Troy chimes in with an awkward laugh, “Oh thank god. For a moment there, I thought you were one crazy killer.”

“ _Where were you, Jeffery? Are you okay? We haven’t heard from you since last week at Troy and Abeds_ ,” Shirley inquires politely. Jeff ignores her question and instead deflects towards Troy’s conversation instead.

“That’s insane. What’s going on in here, anyway? I thought this was just supposed to be a pre-party,” he asks, feigning the lack of tip-off from the Dean.

“Oh, Britta decided to start off the night by asking us to tell Spooky stories. She started it off, then I went, then Pierce went, then Troy, Shirley and then we ended on a really high note with Annie,” Abed explains, pointing at a smiling Edison as he finishes. 

“Not finished, Abed. Now that Jeff’s here, we have one more story to tell out,” Britta states with a smile as she sits back down.

“ _Brit-tah, I’m sure Jeffery would rather go the party instead of telling a scary story,_ ” Shirley quips as Pierce agrees with him, “Yeah. The chicken fingers should be all gone by now, but at this rate, we’ll miss the taco meat.”

“What!” Troy exclaims in protest but he quickly changes his tone and sits back down when he makes eye contact with Britta, “I mean… It’s cool. I’m cool.”

“So, what’s it going to be, Jeff?” Annie looks at him curiously. And to the surprise of everyone in the room, including himself, Jeffery Winger voluntarily agrees to tell spooky story seven.

\---

Six friends scream in terror as a deranged maniac chases after them through the woods. They manage to make it into a log cabin intact, but just when they think they’re all safe, the maniac pops up again and attacks them. Cornered and nowhere to run, they scream for help as he approaches them. But just as they’re about to be killed, their seventh friend makes it just in time to save the day. He single-handedly vanquishes the villain and…

\---

Through a chorus of boos and a flurry of paper balls, Jeff is pulled out of his story.

“Come on, Jeff. Could you at least make us believe you’re trying? Even Britta’s story was better than that crap,” Pierce Hawthorne accuses him as Abed nods along in agreement. Britta protests with a frown and Shirley makes an annoyed face, shaking her head disapprovingly, “Let’s just go to the party. It’s almost half past 10; _**I swear to God, this half-assed story…**_ ”

As Shirley goes to stand, he gets up with her, “Wait, no! Okay. Let me try again. I’ve got a better one.”

\---

It’s a completely normal day for six friends who are sitting in a room together. One friend jokes out loud about some butt stuff; they laugh. One of them takes down notes to share with everybody, dotting her ‘I’s with little tiny circles. One friend doesn’t have to be here because he’s done all this at least twice over the past 10 years, but he sticks around. Just to be with them. One of them prays to a God only she believes in for all her friends to one day see the light and join her in ‘her’ ideal depiction of paradise. One friend rambles off passionately, needlessly defiant about a cause only she seems to care about. But they care about her so they support that dumb cause anyway. And the last friend sits quietly observing everyone else, knowing full well that he doesn’t always need to be heard for his presence to be felt, and that if he weren’t there even for the time it takes to get a pizza, the group would descend into anarchy. Six friends. Coexisting perfectly with one another; an ideal Community.

Silently, a seventh watches them all. Not in the background, like some unwelcome vent-dwelling interloper but right across them; there from the beginning when the six were formerly seven. Always present, but with his impactful contributions to the group long gone, he allowed himself to fade into irrelevancy due to his own insecurities. In the past, when his friends constantly argued and fought, he would come in and resolve disputes before they crossed the point of no return. Essentially, the role of peacekeeping leader fell upon him. That was until they all learned to self-govern and coexist. Now, he exists as a voiceless ghost of who he used to be as his cries for help fail to reach them.

Not because they didn’t want to hear him… But because whenever he tries to call out, the words die in his mouth, refusing to leave. Almost as if his lips themselves want him to be entirely and utterly alone. And through that loneliness, despite caring for them so much he can’t help but feel angry and, disappointed and bitter. I mean, why can’t they see he’s in pain? He tries to reason with himself that this was on them, that if he really truly mattered, they’d _know_ , despite him being able to say nothing.

That’s a lie. Because he knows in his heart that what frustrated him the most is that this was all his fault. That he’d just gotten so damned good at hiding how he truly felt from everyone, especially those who he finds himself closest to.

“Uh… Jeff?”

Through all of the manipulation, the bullshit, the smoke and mirrors he’d put up to protect himself, he forgot the simple fact that protecting yourself too much means that the good stuff sometimes has a hard time getting in. And everything you try to send out could get blocked out too. And so he kept up his act and kept them at arm’s length. He would constantly text, even if there was no one on the other end. He would constantly be late, just so that they would think his life extended beyond the four walls they shared together. He never held eye contact for too long because he figures that deep down, if they saw he truly was, they would see that he was broken. And he was scared what that would mean to him. Or to them.

Because of all those things he took a step back. And then another. And another until one day, because of all those steps, they just stopped hearing him; they ended up GROWING and THRIVING together, not needing him anymore. So he deals with the pain by watching them from a distance, and going overboard whenever he gets called in like an overeager imp. _Craig._ And when he’s alone he drowns himself in booze like a drunken limey. _Duncan._ Always afraid that eventually, if things get too dark, he might end up betraying them and doing something he regrets, like…

“Chang,” Jeff mentions with a faraway look in his eyes as he trails off softly.

“Jeff… Is this still part of your story?” Annie asks him cautiously. Jeff shakes his head and blinks as his mind snaps out from the trance he had seemingly been in, “Yeah. I’m alright. But…”

“I, uh… I forgot something in my car,” he says with an uncomfortable, fake smile then quickly attempts to bolt away towards the door. She blocks his way before the rest of them join her, “Guys, let me go!”

He struggles against them to try to break free and run away until her palm cracks itself against his cheek, bringing him out of his stupor just like how ‘Anne’ had done to her vampire friend in her story. Annie shakes her head, teary-eyed, “You idiot. Nobody’s leaving you behind. We’re your friends.”

The tightness in his heart unknots.

“Yeah. We’ve all been there; felt alone or the odd one out in at least one point in our lives. High School,” Abed points at himself and Annie, before pointing towards Shirley and Pierce, “College.”

“Whenever people pick lab partners by GPA,” he then motions towards Britta and Troy before pointing towards Jeff himself, “Or whenever there are no external threats to conquer and they insist on staying alone for a week, refusing to leave their apartment.”

_Wait, how did Abed know that?_

“We know what you’re going through, and I know it’s no excuse that they all had their own things that fell through last week, but we’re sorry we didn’t notice you were struggling worse than the rest of us.”

His shoulders untense.

“ _We all want you here, Jeffery. It wouldn’t be the same without you,_ ” Shirley chimes in with a smile, “ _And I thank Jesus for keeping you safe during that week._ You must have been struggling so hard.”

He nods along with her politely.

“We’re here for you, man. Let us know if you need anything and we’ll totally be there. But we’ll try to pick up on the quiet stuff too,” Troy smiles warmly.

He smiles back.

“Yeah, I’m really sorry, Jeff. As the group’s resident psychologist, I should have seen this coming. I’ll do some extra reading on ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’, or SAD,” Britta offers as people look at her confusingly, “ _What? It’s a thing._ ”

He shakes his head and lets out a short laugh, knowing that when it counts, Britta does not in fact get things wrong.

“Jeffery. I’ve been in many groups in the past. They’ve all kicked me out. Now sure, this group tried to do it twice but what matters is it didn’t happen. Do you know why? That table is magic,” Pierce exclaims, pointing towards the Study table, “But… So are these people. At the start of the school year, you attacked the table with an Axe and you’re still here. And I bribed Professor Kane a couple thousand dollars to kick you out of a class… And I’m still here,”

Pierce Hawthorne winks at him subtly. Because we want to be here. _And our friends want us to be here. Because they care._

After a moment of silence, he speaks out, “I wanted someone to worry about me.”

Jeff lifts up the right side of his jacket and shirt up, exposing a scar on his right side, “I did this to myself in 7th grade because I lied and told everyone in my class that I had appendicitis. But when Beth Brennen asked to see the scar, I didn’t want to get found out so I took moms scissors and made one. I got 17 cards that day that I still keep underneath my bed 21 years later because it proves that at someone, at some point, cared about me.”

“I was never close to those kids, and yet I did this to myself just to get their approval. Those kids didn’t want to see me, or hear me. It took a scar for them to do it. You guys mean so much more to me than they do. And I know you’re all trying to reach me. So I promise to try to meet you halfway there,” He smiles as they all converge on him for a hug. It’s fleeting, but for him creates a memory that would last an eternity; warm, and wholesome and complete. Jeff Winger doesn’t feel alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Amrywiol and Spencer for respectfully navigating Character Personalities.
> 
> Come Join us on Discord:


	9. End Tag: Something Entirely Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific Chapter Tags: None. 9 POVs are Explored in this Chapter.

**\- Annie -**  
As the hug breaks apart, she notices Jeff sporting a huge, beaming smile as he invites them to move venues, “Alright, guys. It’s getting late. How about we catch what’s left of that Spook-tacular Dance?”

Shirley nods in agreement, as Pierce and Abed pick up their things in preparation to leave. As Annie motions towards her clutch, Jeff approaches her discreetly, “Uh, hey. Can we talk?”

She smiles politely, and hums in a nervous, high-pitched tone, knowing full well what he wants to discuss. Annie always dreaded whenever they had this conversation because one way or another, it always fell back to either them having to be discreet, or a lecture about compartmentalizing feelings.

Her relationship with Jeff was complicated. And since the start of the school year, things between them felt _different_. Almost as if she was dealing with two Jeffs. One who wanted her, and the other who simply wanted to be her friend. One moment, he was flirting, then the next he was pushing her away. Their tumultuous interactions clearly weren’t on her; not at first, at least. She could no longer claim that after what she said post-kiss in Troy and Abed’s apartment. 

Whenever… whatever it was she had with Jeff seemed to progress anywhere past platonic, one, or both of them would end up either inadvertently or intentionally changing the relationship back into something weird. And after over two years of knowing Jeff Winger, she didn’t know what to feel, or which of the two Jeffs she wanted him to be: friends, or something more. She liked him at one point, surely. Part of her probably still did, but sometimes, things just change. And all Annie knew was that if the cards were on the table right now, she wouldn’t be drawing the ‘Queen of Hearts’ this time around. 

Before they could get into that conversation, however, they hear clamoring from the rest of the group as Britta and Troy bar the way out, preventing everyone else from exiting, “Wait! No! No one can leave until we figure this out.”

“ _ **Britta, I know you’re not going to block a grown-ass woman from having dinner and going to that party,**_ ” Shirley announces with her threatening tone, skipping the sweet part of her two-tone entirely. Pierce joins in with the questioning, “Yeah, what’s going on here? You guys did this too after Annie finished her story.”

Britta scrambles to the center of the room as a confused, but supportive Abed blocks the other exit that his best friend wasn’t already in front of, “Okay, long story short. Those psych tests I made you take came back. Turns out one of you is probably a homicidal maniac.”

“That’s stupid,” Annie declares to her blonde friend flatly. There was no way one of them could be a killer; maybe if they were counting Chang, sure, but not anyone from the OG Greendale Study Group. Britta continued despite her remark, “I have a responsibility as a practitioner of the mental arts to figure out which one of you is sick and get you the treatment you need. You could be a danger to yourself and others in your current state.”

“We’ve known each other for two years. None of us are murderers,” Pierce counteracts but still, Britta insists, “No, but one of you has the potential. This is an EXTREME personality disorder. Like a sociopathic Dorito. Or a cool ranch lunatic.”

“One of us? You took that test too, right?” Annie states bluntly, as it dawns on her that her friend has been using ‘you’ instead of ‘us’ as an unintentional speech pattern. This causes Britta’s eyes to widen in realization, “Wait. What are you saying? Oh my gosh, what if it’s me?”

Suddenly, the lights cut out again and the room fills with screams. But in the darkness, Jeff’s voice breaks through to break the tension down, “Guys! Guys! Calm down… I’ve got something to say.”

The silence in the pitch-black room lingers for a moment before it is broken by Troy Barnes, “Okay, so what are-”

“Shh… He’s waiting for the lights to come back on for dramatic effect,” Abed explains, somewhere from the other corner of the room. After a few more moments of darkness, the lights switch back on. It was comforting to see him go back to what she knew him to be: _strong, supportive and..._ Everyone’s eyes pan over to Jeff and after a few more seconds, be breaks out a guilty smile, “Okay, so I MAY have filled out my test randomly.”

 _And a slacker. Why am I not surprised?_ Annie shakes her head and lets out a soft chuckle. _Classic Jeff._

“You idiot. That was probably the test that returned the psychotic result! Is this your test?” Britta accuses Jeff as she pulls out a piece of paper from her folder and flashes it to him. Jeff shrugs, “How should I know. It’s just a bunch of bubbles.”

As Britta flashes the result in Jeff’s face, Annie notices an anomaly with the paperwork, “Wait. Give me those.”

She takes the papers from Britta and goes over them for a second, “Why are the scores at the bottom of the sheets? They should…” 

“Britta, look at the arrow.” Annie looks up towards Britta, her face deadpanning as she tries her hardest not show any frustration to her friend or the others, “You ran these through the machine upside-down.”

And from the corner of the room, Abed declares what everyone else was likely thinking, “She Britta’d it.”  


**\- Troy -**  
The room fills up with a chorus of frustrated groans as the group, with the exception of Troy Barnes collectively turns on her. Despite usually totally being on-board with a Britta-boo-train, Troy holds back on this one. Not because it wasn’t boo-worthy. It really was. But because he noticed that despite her being accustomed to dealing with all the ‘Britta is the worst’ commonplace jokes, and just going with it, she actually seems to be affected this time around.

Like a subtle, generally unnoticeable facial tick that someone might make when they’re trying to hold in a fart, he sees it. She’s shrinking back, not engaging. No crackbacks, references about dystopian anti-government novels, or sticking out her tongue. Britta’s really reeling this one way more than all the other times they made fun of her protest-for-a-causes put together.

“God, didn’t you drop the first set of tests into a puddle? I can’t believe you double Britta’d the same test,” someone calls out as the group continues to pile it on even more.

“Wait. Are you all using my name to mean ‘make a small mistake’?” Britta asks them warily, likely knowing that it isn’t what they mean, but hoping against her gut that she’s right anyway. Abed shakes his head in disagreement, but before she sees him and before anyone can correct her, Troy interjects, “Yes.”

The study group pans towards him in surprise; he stares them down and signals them to dial it back down a little. This was her first major assignment into Psychology, after all. “Everyone just chill, alright? Everyone makes mistakes. We all know at the end of the day, we’ll help each other through this anyway, so can we just skip the finger-pointing this time and get to the helping part?”

“No need to make such a big deal about a small Britta’d situation, right?” He asks them all, trying to use her definition as a ‘new’ form of Britta’d. Everyone nods in agreement with the exception of Pierce, “You’re using it wrong!”

Shirley elbows Pierce to the side just before Britta manages to catch it. Post-ribbing, his ex-roommate changes his tune, “I mean… Ye… Yes. What Troy said. Britta’d. Small mistake.”

Troy nods at Pierce in thanks. As Britta would have said: ‘Dilemma deleted’. With that potential argument dealt with, he asks her supportively, “Britta, we can fix this. How can we all help?”

Britta looks towards him relieved before, addressing the group with her mood slightly improved, “I just need you all to take a form, re-fill it out and then we’ll run them through again. And you guys are going to stop using my name to mean ‘making a tiny and understandable mistake’.”

Troy nods.

“Let’s hand them out, then.”

  
**\- Jeff -**  
After Troy hands out a pair of sheets for him to transfer, Jeff joins Annie in the corner of the room as she begins to fill out her forms, “Hey.”

“Hey,” she smiles back. He notices a lingering hesitation in her greeting, similar to when he approached her earlier before they found out that the tests needed to be reinputted. Oops. His bad. Annie speaks first, trying to bridge small talk into the heavier conversation that she must’ve also been expecting, “So… How are you feeling? That was a lot of sharing from someone who likes to keep his life compartmentalized.”

“Okay, I deserved that. Honestly, I feel weird. But it feels good to get all that stuff off my chest,” he replies, sitting down next to her, “Could I borrow a pen? I must’ve left mine at home in clothes that I actually use.”

Annie rolls her eyes and reaches for one from her bag before handing a non-Purple pen back to him. Jeff takes it, “Thanks - By the way, I have something for you. I had it over the past week for safekeeping when you left early.”

Jeff returns the cardigan back to her and she takes it, before refolding it in her own preferred fashion before placing it next to her, “I still can’t believe I didn’t it take it with me when I left the apartment right after we…”

She trails off. And for a moment, neither of them speaks. Then both of them utter the same phrase at the exact same time, “I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” Annie offers but Jeff shakes his head disagreeing with her sentiment, “It’s fine, you said that instinctively. But I shouldn’t have done what I did after that. It was petty, and childish and it wasn’t fair of me to impose my ideals of what a grown-up should be like to someone who’s comfortable with who they are.”

“I’ve said and done a lot of things over the past month that I regret, Annie,” Jeff continues as she meets his gaze with hers, “But the thing I regret saying most isn’t what I said that day at Troy and Abed’s apartment.”

“Oh?” Annie inquires as he continues with his statement, “What I regret was what I said when we were in front of that other Annie when she asked us about our relationship.”

“I downplayed it and I shouldn’t have. I told her and everyone else there that you were just my friend… But you’re not just my friend, Annie,” he shares before taking a short pause to collect himself. Jeff was tired of half-assing being her friend; that ended up with him being unreliable and Annie getting frustrated over having to carry his slack. He was tired of half-assing trying to be something more with her; this was even worse because he was hurting both of them. It was time to whole-ass trying to be one of those things to her and when it came time to choose, surprisingly, even to Jeff himself, the answer came easy, “I think you may just be the best friend I’ve got. And I’d like to start treating you that way.”

“How does that sound to you? Best friends?” Jeff proposes. She nods in agreement, and he notices that had he not brought it up, she likely would have ended up with that same decision herself, “Best friends.”

“So… Best friend… I thought you told us that you’d never wear a backpack?” Annie jokes at him as she returns to shading bubbles.

“I had to decide between wearing a backpack, or having to carry around a hot pink cardigan all night, I’ll take the backpack; you can keep it, by the way,” Jeff offers as she hums excitedly and gives him a hug, “Aww thanks, Jeff! Are you heading to the party?”

For the first time since arriving in the Study Room, he checked his phone: 11:06. A message from the dean checking up on how he was. _I should probably reply to that one later._ And another text from Duncan reminding him that he’ll be at the ‘Tipsy Fanny’, an English pub at least until midnight. As thoughts of his last close encounter with the Brit flashed through his mind, one phrase stuck out to him more than anything. _‘I am quite lonely’_. 

“Sorry, Annie. I think… I need to see someone tonight,” Jeff tells her. Her eyes widen and she opens her mouth, but before she can come up with a teasing remark about ditching his friends for a woman, he quickly adds, “It’s Duncan. He’s leaving for England in a couple days for who knows how long and he wanted to go get a drink. What about you?”

“I really want to go, but I’ll probably just head home. I want to beat the midnight pervert rush at Dildopolis,” Annie replies nonchalantly, trying to pass off her insane routine as normal. He shakes his head at her, “Annie, seriously? You have got to leave that apartment.”

“Shh! It’s fine, Jeff. I’ll just park really close to the shop, and sprint to my room as fast as I can. No big deal.”

“Well, if you leave in the next 20 minutes or so, I can convoy along the way to make sure you get home safe. But if ever you decide to stay for the party, please ask Troy, Abed, or one of the Girls escort her home.”

“Thanks for the offer, Jeff,” she tells him appreciatively, “What do you think I should do?”

“Well, personally, I think you should get out of that place. But as for the party, whether choose to head over there, or go home early, you make the call, Annie. You’re not a little kid anymore.”  


**\- Troy and Britta -**  
“Hey, Troy… I’m sorry. For Britta’d-ing it tonight,” She says disappointingly as she puts in the test papers into the machine.

“It’s no problem at all, Britta. It was a tiny mistake,” Troy replies, trying to ease her anxiety as he double-checks that they’re facing the right direction this time.  
“I know what it really means, you know…” Britta trails off as she presses the ‘Analyze’ button on the scanner. His shoulders tense up and his voice shoots up a couple octaves, “Oh?”

“Yeah, but it’s fine… Thanks for trying to cover for me back there. It’s just hard sometimes, you know? I don’t mind messing stuff up, but when it’s something I want to be good at, it’s just harder to take in,” she says, trying to downplay how much this is all affecting her. But Troy picks up right away, “You’re new at this Psych thing Britta. I’m sure you’ll get better at it with time. It’s only been like a month.”

“How do you know that? What if I’m crap at this too? I’ve already messed up everyone’s night-” she exclaims as she plops down and sits on the floor next to the machine as it processes its results.

“You mean made the night more awesome? We hung out with our friends telling spooky stories. What would we have done in the party? Tell Leonard to shut up when he passes by and keep an eye out for Security guard Chang?” he piques up excitedly, trying to cheer her up. She offers a somber smile in return, before he chimes back in, “I know you’ll be a totally awesome Psychologist, Britta. You listen to people. And you actually care. And as for knowing you’ll get better… Let me tell you a secret.”

He sits next to her on the floor, “I don’t really tell people this but, I wasn’t good at football right away. My dad was gifted at it, so he figured I would be too. It was in my blood, he said. But it wasn’t. Before I was ‘T-Bone’, and before I joined that team, I flat-out sucked. And for months leading up to tryout season, I practiced throwing that football alone in the park at night because I didn’t want anybody to see that I wasn’t good at it.”

“That’s why I think you can do this. Because I know you want to help people more than I wanted to just ‘be good at football’. And after all these years, I never told my dad. He just figured that I was a late bloomer, so the keg-flip was another way out for me,” Troy sighs, as Britta turns to face him and places an arm on his shoulder, “You don’t have to guard yourself to be a man, Troy. Letting things out like this can help sometimes. Thanks for sharing that with me. I feel a lot better. Really.”

“Anytime. You’re really cool, Britta,” they share a quiet moment staring into each other’s eyes as warmth fills their chests. But before anything has time to manifest, the machine beeps out loud thrice to signify that it was finished.

“Uhm… I guess we should get back to the guys and check out those tests,” she stammers through a slight blush rising on her cheeks as she stands and offers her hand to him to get up, “Ye… yeah.”

“Thanks for helping tonight, by the way. I don’t think I could’ve gone through this without you.”

“You would have nailed it. But thanks for asking me. This was fun; we should do this more often.”

“Now let’s have a quick peekaroony at the results to make sure I didn’t Britta’d-”

“To make sure WE didn’t make a small mistake,” He interjects, correcting her plurality while removing the offensive remark.

“To make sure WE didn’t make a small mistake, Thanks, Troy,” she nods at him as they take a look at the results together, “Oh… I guess this means more than one of us may have a few Fruit Loops loose…” 

  
**\- Shirley -**  
“ _Hellooo Christina, I’m sorry that I’m still out. Something came up and I think I’ll be home past midnight. Could I perhaps get a discount for today?_ ” Shirley inquires with her babysitter and is quickly rejected, “ _ **Well, why the hell not? They’re asleep, aren’t they? It’s not the same job.**_ ”

She hated using that tone on her neighbor’s daughter, but Shirley knew that the girl was basically just watching TV way past her bedtime and on her phone with her boyfriend all night anyway now that her three kids were asleep. _Dear lord, she better just be on the phone with her boyfriend. Jesus, please protect my immaculate home._ Luckily, it seemed to do the trick and Christina accepted it, “ _Oh God bless you. If you’re still hungry, I still have some leftover pies from last week in the re-_ ”

_Click._

“ _He… Hellooo?_ ” Shirley called out to the cut-off line. She inhaled deeply, and in order to not blow her top, off at being hung up on, she prayed.

_Dear Jesus, I know she probably didn’t intend to cut me off like that when she did but if she did, that little **sassy-ass kid** better mind her manners or so help me, the next time I have to look for someone to kid-sit, I’m calling the little Latin kid from across the street. But please, Jesus make sure my babies don’t grow up to be like that._

As she continues, Shirley looks around the room and goes over her friends one by one.

_Please bless Jeffery for his wonderful sharing today. I know that boy doesn’t often open up about his personal life, so you clearly must have touched his spirit today. Now, I only wish that he’d finally stop **LYING** to everyone about his **AGE**. I know for damned sure that we’re almost the same age. There is no way in hell that boy is in his mid-30s._

_Please bless An-nie and inspire her to not take school too seriously. I truly hope she doesn’t get jealous that I’m in the running for valedictorian and that if I just so happen to beat her GPA when we graduate, she can graciously accept that fact. Also, Jesus, please help her find a new place to live. That change she suggested during Abed’s story tonight seemed too real to be made up. Girl’s got some real dark stuff she’s dealing with wherever she’s living._

_Please bless Abed for being such a sweet little caramel angel. I hope that living with Troy will end up being a good influence on them both. Lord, you know the dangers people going through living in the dorm rooms, and I’m sure as hell even Satan himself would cringe at what Troy had to endure living with Pierce. I only hope that their living environment helps them become good people._

_Please bless Troy and watch over him, since I feel like he’s been starting making more of those googly-eyes at Brit-tah. If they start dating, he’ll find out about the weed and all of the adult-married things so fast, I hope they take it slow instead of going at it right away like a bunch of horny toads._

_Please bless Brit-tah in this new path in life she is taking. I know she means well, and I’m proud of her since she looks like she’s committed to sticking it out with this one, but I’m concerned that even if her heart says she wants to help people, she might just not be capable to do it. Still, though. Miracles do happen, and maybe it’s time to have a little bit of faith in this one._

_Please bless Pierce and help him be better because good Christian Women need to pray for everyone, even those people are stubborn old fools._

_Amen, Jesus._

Just as Shirley completes her prayer, Troy and Britta return to the room, sporting serious looks on their faces. _Oh no… Do we still have a psychopath among us? Dear Jesus, please protect us all._ She makes the sign of the cross and joins everyone as they surround the study table.  


**\- Britta -**  
Britta lays out the tests one at a time on the table as the rest of her friends gather around her. She places the first one down and the rest of them breathe a sigh of relief. But her and Troy both know that the mood is about to change.

One by one, she drops all the other tests down onto the table, escalating in gravity, ending with a test that sported an endless sea or red crosses over it. Six out of the Seven of them were flagged as ‘Code 9’ for an extreme personality disorder. A chill silence befalls the room before Pierce finally speaks, “So we’re all insane.”

“Well, except this person,” Annie positively brings up as she points to the first paper that Britta had put down in the center. Jeff questions her, “Britta, is that one mine?”

“We should probably figure it out, right? If one of us isn’t crazy, it’s only fair that the rest of us know who they are,” Troy offers sadly.

“Or… We could hold on to the comforting notion that… that any one of us, might be sane,” Shirley says worriedly. Abed quips from the back, “Is it too late us to go back in time and undo finding out Britta Britta’d the tests and we only have the one crazy person and we all think it’s Jeff’s random test?”

“Abed, we’re not using that word anymore,” Troy tells him flatly. He just nods back, “Okay.”

As a wave of depression threatens to crash into them all, a spark awakens in Britta as her Psychology classes and George Orwell knowledge just seem to click together to make sense of it all, “You know what? Screw this! No.”

They stare at her, perplexed and speechless. 

“This test only shows red flags for **POTENTIAL** homicidal tendencies. And although, sure there are risks, this isn’t 1984 where the Thought Police catch people for just having ideas in their mind-sockets. What matters most are their actions. What people do because that’s **REAL** character,” Britta states confidently, and surprisingly to herself, for the first time in a while, her friends seem to be listening unironically to her thoughts on this issue without a volley of paper balls.

“This world is chaotic and so much things happen seemingly out of nowhere. There’s only one thing we can truly control in this raft of life, floating around on this sea of randomness. The ropes. Or vines. Whatever, that was a lame metaphor anyway. Anyway, the ropes are us,” she stammers towards the end there before dropping the metaphor entirely. She wasn’t really good at those anyway, but that’s not what was important right now.

“It doesn’t matter what these tests say because at the end of the day, we make our own decisions and over the past few years that I’ve known you all, every one of you has proven that when push comes to shove, you’ll all do the right thing when it truly counts.” Britta then turned towards her friends one by one.

“Abed stayed locked up in a Psych test for over TWENTY-SIX hours just to help out a friend.”  
“Annie dropped out of a college election she really wanted to win because she saw it was starting to compromise her morals.”  
“Jeff, despite being occasionally an unbearable douchebag… Is trying to be better.”  
“Pierce had the opportunity to **_SCREW_** us all last year when he was upset at us, and yet he still pulled through.”  
“Shirley let herself be called ‘Judas’ to help Abed not screw himself from making that disasterpiece of a meta movie.”  
“And Troy supports his friends no matter what, even when they Britta’d something up.”

“We don’t use that word anymore,” Abed chimes in as she says it. She smiles endearingly, but freezes when she hears Jeff ask her an impossible question, “What about you, Britta?”

She swallows nervously, not knowing what to say. But Troy does, “That’s easy, Jeff. Whenever there’s something wrong, she tries her hardest to fix it, even when it hurts her. And that’s because at the end of the day, she cares about her friends so much. She’s the best.” 

**\- Abed and Annie -**  
Annie places her overstuffed clutch and newly-acquired backpack onto the study room table and proceeds to move things around. She couldn’t believe Jeff had this just laying around his apartment for over a year, collecting dust. The pocket count on this thing alone was insane; it had compartments for everything, even the cardigan that he had returned to her that evening.

After some time, she manages to get most of her things transferred into her backpack to where she wants them to be. With exceptions for the essentials, of course, which needed to stay put in her clutch: Keys, Wallet, Phone, Bubble Gum Lip Gloss, some makeup… Pepper Spray and a Gun. Annie slings her bag back, loops the straps around both her shoulders and readies herself to head home; she would’ve wanted to stay longer. But it just wasn’t worth the risk. As she pulls out her keys, Abed inquires from the opposite side of the table, “Are you heading home?”

“Yeah… I think I should. It’s getting pretty late and Jeff said he could convoy with me on the way there… It’s out of the way for Shirley and Britta, so I figured I should probably just call it a night,” Annie states disappointingly, while still trying to keep an upbeat demeanor.

“Why don’t you just stay at our place tonight? It’s only a couple blocks away so you can just leave your car at school. Or park it in front of our apartment; nobody really uses up the parking there anyway,” Abed offers. To the side, Troy nods in agreement as he tries to pack all his Pierce gifts back into the giftbox.

“Are you sure it’s not a bother? You guys just moved in, I don’t want to intrude,” she prods politely, trying to be too intrusive. But Abed insists, “It actually works out. That way, Troy and I will be able to catch a ride home without anyone having to drop us off, and we can all leave whenever we want. Britta could probably take us home no problem, but we don’t know how long Shirley will be there for, Jeff seems to be just about ready to go and Pierce is… Well, Pierce.”

“Alright. Let’s do that, then,” Annie confirms before transitioning to a lingering thought that she had meant to say since the last time they saw each other, “I’m so sorry I left so early last week. Something came up but now it’s…”

She trails off and catches Jeff apologizing to Pierce about being so hard on him in Bio at the start of the semester. Jeff sees Annie staring at him, and he waves at her while smiling.

“Resolved,” she states happily as Abed nods in agreement before judging her comfort levels regarding sleeping arrangements, “You cool with crashing on the couch? We don’t really have extra beds.”

“Totally. Couch sounds good. You know, I didn’t really get to say it when I came over, but I actually loved your place. It felt like an actual home,” Annie smiles. Abed can see it in her eyes; that she wants to ask if she could join in. Maybe he was getting a bit better with social queues after all. So he doesn’t miss a beat, “Well, if you don’t mind how your sleep goes tonight, maybe you should move in with us.”

While previously just nodding along in the background to his roommate’s previous statements, Troy does a double-take at that last one; Abed takes quiet note of it. _This will probably come up later during the discussion about Dreamatorium zoning permits. I just hope the Drum Kit leverage will suffice so the current floor plan doesn’t change all that much._

“Okay then. We’ll discuss it. So, party?” she asks all giddy, attempting to hide just how elated she is about finally having an out of Dildopolis.

“Party,” he nods. As she returns the keys to her purse, he catches a quick glimpse into it and spots the gun, “.38 Special?”

“Hm-hm,” she agrees, “Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Good add to the story, by the way. Very immersive.”

“You need help with those things? You’ve got a lot of bags. I could carry your purse, or…” He offers. She shakes her head before deciding otherwise and nodding once, “Maybe the backpack?”

She passes it to him, “You mind if we put some of Troy’s and my stuff in there? Just for now.”

“Not at all.”

“The stuff’s mostly mine, Abed. I can take the backpack,” Troy offers but Abed rejects it, “I got this. We’ll follow you guys out a bit. Go help Britta.”

Troy nods at him and heads off to the side. With her bag packed and slung into his shoulders, they head towards the door together, “Thanks Abed.”

“Anytime.”  


**\- Pierce -**  
“Thanks, Pierce,” Jeff tells him as they step into the outside hall. It was music to his ears. Liquid Ambrosia. Pierce Hawthorne nodded back at Jeff in triumphant acceptance, “It was my pleasure, Jeffery. Wa… Wait. For what?”

Jeff shakes his head before going in further into the conversation, “For saying something back there… And during Biology. I know I already thanked you for that but… I guess I just have a little bit more to be grateful about now.”

“Think nothing of it,” Pierce waves it off dismissively. He knew full-well what Jeff was getting at, but it was so rare that Winger actually said something nice so feigning ignorance, much like he feigned heart-attacks allowed him to milk it whenever the opportunity surfaced. What was unexpected treat for Pierce, however, was that he got two for the price of one.

“I’m really impressed by you, you know?” Jeff adds to his previous statement.

“Hrmn..?”

“You’ve been yourself. Totally, unashamedly your own grumpy, dick-ish, but on occasion, insightful self for the past two years. How did you get to be so open?”

“You don’t make friends by not being who you are, Jeffery. Not real ones, anyway. I’ve been in this school for over 10 years, and I don’t usually stay in a group for any time longer than a semester. This one, right here. This is real. And you’ll only fully come to realize that they want you to be here when you’re at their worst and they still won’t forcibly remove you like you did that Buddy fellow during the first year. Almost losing this study group… That was last year for me. I thought it would’ve been this year for you, but it seems like maybe that might not be the case anymore,” Pierce advises him in a moment of clarity, before he reverts back to his normal self, “Of course, as real as you are with people… It’s always good to keep some secrets. I’ve got dirt on everyone here that you wouldn’t **BELIEVE** , Jeff.”

“ _ **Dirt? Who’s got dirt?**_ ” Shirley chimes curiously with an enormous smile as she walks up next to them. Britta and Troy follow close by, but stop as Shirley pulls back away slightly and gives Pierce that sultry suspicious look that Pierce would never admit intimidates him sexually, “ _ **Wait.** This isn’t one of those recording bits that you tried to pull on me like last year, is it?_”

“No, Shirley. Real secrets. World-shattering secrets,” Pierce grins back, “I mean… Probably not as big as that thing with Shirley and Chang, but I’ve got dirt on every single one of you.”

“Shirley, don’t listen to him. That time was a fluke; he’s got nothing,” Britta defiantly states back at him. Pierce points towards Shirley and Britta, confused, “Wait, what’s this now? You know Shirley isn’t a lesbian, right?”

“Shirley and I are good friends now,” Britta frowns at him, offended. Shirley nods along with her comment agreeing, “ _Yeeesss… The stories really brought us together and it seems like we both helped influence each other’s future careers._ ”

“Well, so are Jeff and I. We’re practically Best friends,” Pierce snaps back, not to be undone. From behind, Jeff tries to object, “Uhm-”

But Britta cuts him off before he can say anything, “What a load of horse crap. You and Jeff are not that close. Shirley and I are way closer and nothing you can say can change that, right Shirley?”

“ _Ye… es?_ ” Shirley’s voice raises a pitch higher, doubting Britta’s confidence. Hubris. He knows the exact secret to bring up. Pierce shakes his head, “You sure about that?”

“B…ritta, please stop. That’s enough now…” Shirley tries to interject.

“Yep,” Britta persists, ignoring her so-called good friend’s advice, but quickly changes her tune from confidence to apprehension when she sees that look on his face, “Wait. No, you’re making that face you made before you made all those handicapped kids cry. Pierce…”

“She smoked weed at the parking lot in your son’s baptism!” Pierce declared out loud while accusingly pointing a finger straight towards Britta. As Shirley’s eyes widen and her jaw drops, Jeff slaps his gently across the arm to gain his attention, “ **PIERCE!** ”

“She crossed me,” Pierce states back towards his supposedly new best friend as his face trembles. Everyone collectively rolls their eyes at him, “What? I won.”

“It isn’t about winning, Pierce. It’s about compassion, and forgiveness and Being there for one another… _Even if some people decide to show up as **high as a kite** to one of the most important days of my baby’s life,_” Shirley gives Britta the stink-eye as she begins to walk towards the Cafeteria alone.

_Whatever. I won._

After a respectable distance, Pierce, Troy and Britta start walking that way as well. For a moment, there is utter silence. Pretty awkward, likely because of Troy’s obvious crush on Britta and the fact that her sexual preferences didn’t likely lean that way. That or the interracial thing. And while Pierce couldn’t help his ex-roommate with wooing lesbians – you had to be born with that gift, like he was himself - he could help him break down the other barrier.

“I banged Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom!” he exclaimed to them both to break the tension. They groaned in disgust, called him disgusting, then started joking around with each other as the three of them walked towards the cafeteria Spook-tacular. With the silent strain of his friends dissipated, Pierce Hawthorne chalked himself up for another win.  


**\- Abed -**  
“I’m sorry, but could we stop by the women’s restroom for a moment? I kind of want to at least put some face paint on for the party,” Annie requests with a shy smile. Jeff and Abed nod along in agreement as they take a pitstop before the Cafeteria building. As Annie enters and an appropriate amount of time passes, he speaks “I always wanted to do this trope.”

“Which one? Two dudes standing outside the girl’s bathroom?” Jeff asks him sarcastically. Abed shakes his head, “Two friends hanging out while waiting for their third friend to come along. They start with small talk until it organically starts to transition into a deeper, more meaningful conversation.”

“Is this the small talk? Because if it is, I somehow feel like mentioning the intent on solely playing out this bit of yours defeats the organic development part, don’t you think?” Jeff brings up a valid point to him. Abed pauses, reassesses the situation, then dives back in, “Fair enough. I’ll start again.”

“You heading out somewhere tonight? Annie told me that you weren’t coming to the party,” Abed pivots. He can see his friend shaking his head slightly, but he answers nonetheless, “Yeah. At first, I figured I’d meet you all at the party and call it a night but, there was a slight change of plans. And after seeing how sometimes, the smallest moments can have the biggest impacts on people’s lives, I figured it would be good to go out for a drink and catch up with an old friend.”

“Duncan?” Abed asks inquisitively. Jeff nods, “He messaged me a week ago asking if I was free tonight. I said no. But after what happened today and seeing how it’s like to have friends like you guys… I figured he needed one too.”

 _Small talk accomplished._ Abed nods back at him in a silence that lingers a bit longer than he intended, but it pays off for him when it’s Jeff that broaches the question this time around, “So… You carrying Annie’s backpack for her, huh?”

“Yep,” he states plainly, missing the social implication entirely. _Was this still small talk? Wasn’t it supposed to bridge to an important insight by now? Perhaps after another round?_

“Take care of her, will you?” Jeff says to him earnestly before correcting himself after a slight pause, “Sorry, it. I meant it. Take care of Annie’s backpack.”

 _Odd sentiment, but okay._ Abed nods back at him. _Any time now._

“Abed?”

“Yeah?”

_Here it comes._

“Do you ever think about that die I tossed last week?” Jeff questions him. _Finally._ He looks away from Jeff and stares into the void of the hallway for dramatic effect, “Everyday. Sometimes, it keeps me up at night. Something tells me I should have caught it.”

“Do you regret not catching it?” Jeff poses him a theoretical question. _Nice. Good for character growth._

“No,” Abed answers him truthfully. Maybe an alternate timeline of him would have regretted possibly not catching that die. But not Timeline ‘5’ Abed. Sure, the past week was pretty rough in helping Troy deal with that Norwegian Troll, but besides that, things seemed to pick up after today. 

“Do you regret throwing it? Despite there only being the six sides?” Abed asks him back. The cheeky grin on Jeff’s face is enough for him to know that Jeff intended to rig that dice game from the start. After another short pause, Jeff answers, “No.”

“There’s no point in dwelling in the past, because that’s where it is. The past,” Jeff says before bridging into the now, “What matters now is the present. And what we make of it.”

“Thanks for looking out for her tonight, by the way. She really didn’t want to go back home,” Jeff thanks him oddly. Abed replies without even a thought, “Why wouldn’t I? She’s Annie.”

“Yeah. She’s Annie,” Jeff nods as the quiet takes over once more.

After a few more minutes of silence, she exits the restroom looking as pale as a corpse, and red stains dripping down her lips. Jeff pulls back in surprise, “Whoa!”

“Vampire? Like your story,” Abed inquires, pointing at her as she nods at him excitedly, “Cool. Cool, cool, cool. If I may, though. I’ve got one fix.”

He removes the red ascot around his neck and drapes it over hers, “There. Bite marks disguised. Shall we go?”

They all say their goodbyes.  
Abed shakes Jeff’s hand.  
Annie hugs Jeff in a tight embrace.  
Then they nod to each other and go their separate ways.  
Jeff, moving on towards a new path.  
And Annie and Abed travelling together towards something entirely different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone in the Community Discord who helped me finish this fic:  
> Amry - For OOC analysis on how to properly treat the A/J relationship with the utmost respect.  
> No Good B - For OOC analysis on A/A relationships.  
> AlmightyMirage - For assistance early on  
> JeffWing - For the Essay Comments, both in and off Ao3.  
> Allyjayrunaway - For Constant Beta Reads
> 
> Most Importantly:  
> Egg - My wife. For everything.
> 
> Come Join us on Discord:  
> https://discord.gg/RAGkfh
> 
> Next Update:  
> Jeff and Duncan go drinking.


End file.
